World's largest limestone mining company stores idle tanker cars on rail siding in Ely
A line of tanker cars sitting idle and empty, while not exactly beautiful, seems innocuous enough.
On the Connecticut River, at the very northernmost tip of Thetford, lies the village of Ely that once housed the Ely Boston & Maine Railroad depot. Nowadays the most obvious sign of rail commerce seems to be the line of forty-some white tanker cars sitting idle on a railway siding to the south. Residents say they have been there for a while, certainly many weeks, some think even a few years. They are marked "limestone slurry" and are either owned or leased by the Omya corporation. Their contents have been drained, as evidenced by the metal caps dangling unscrewed on chains at the drain port beneath each tanker.
Few people on the east side of Vermont are aware that Omya is a huge, privately owned Swiss corporation. In fact it is the world's largest producer of ground calcium carbonate with annual worldwide sales estimated at around $2.5 billion. It is the biggest supplier of calcium carbonate products in the paper industry. Ground calcium carbonate is mixed into wet wood pulp where it fills the gaps between cellulose fibers, replacing a portion of the expensive wood pulp and reducing the weight of the paper. Extremely fine, chemically precipitated calcium carbonate is used to give high-end paper its smooth gloss finish. The acid-neutralizing properties of calcium carbonate also keep paper white and durable over time.
Omya has about 140 facilities spread across over 30 countries worldwide. It developed an interest in Vermont thanks to the Vermont "marble belt," a narrow north-south geological zone sandwiched between the Taconic mountains to the west and the Green Mountains to the east and encompassing towns like Danby, Dorset, Marchester, and Proctor-Rutland. Here ancient limestone deposits were transformed by heat and pressure into high-quality, pure white marble.
Omya purchased the struggling Vermont Marble Company and its mines in 1976 and built a processing factory in Florence, a small unincorporated community within Pittsford, north of Rutland. In fact it owns 8,000 acres spread over 25 Vermont towns where there are significant marble deposits. Florence is where the limestone slurry once contained in the Ely tanker cars originated.
To understand why Omya's tanker cars are parked in Ely, one should note that the final destinations for the limestone slurry include major paper manufacturers in Maine. The limestone slurry is loaded into tanker cars in Florence on the west side of Vermont, then transported on a dedicated branch line to the rail hub in Rutland where the tankers are regrouped into long trains. They are then hauled across the Green Mountains on a rail line known as the Green Mountain Gateway, and reach the east side of Vermont at Bellows Falls on the Connecticut River. From here they continue up the Connecticut River line to paper mills, plastics manufacturers, and chemical plants in northern New England and Canada.
However, there are seasonal fluctuations in demand for limestone slurry. Vermont Rail System, the entity that oversees, but does not own, most railways in Vermont, finds temporary storage sites for idle rail cars, like the rail siding in Ely, till they are needed back in service.
The Florence operation produces about one million tons of ground calcium carbonate a year and ships out rail cars by the thousand. Omya is VT’s largest rail shipper, accounting for about 75% of freight train activity in the Rutland region, and uses 18% of the energy generated by Green Mountain Power.
A recent legislative delegation to Omya's plant in Florence praised it as "one of our region's premier economic engines." On a tour they were told that the largely automated facility employs over 130 workers and relies on over 100 contractors to keep the equipment running 24 hours a day without stoppages. The rate of production of ground calcium carbonate is about 120 tons per hour. While its primary use is in paper manufacturing, it is also incorporated into cereal, paints, personal care products like toothpaste, pharmaceuticals, adhesives, and is widely used in agriculture.
Residents who live near this Omya facility have a different narrative. They complain of noxious and nauseating smells, disturbing noise at night, discharges of white-colored water, dust, and more. Omya has fought attempts by the state, neighbors, and the group Vermonters for a Clean Environment to make them apply for a permit for their waste disposal landfill and also for their chemically-contaminated waste. Residents of nearby Danby fought Omya for four years over a proposed new mine in a scenic valley that would require an Act 250 permit, a wastewater discharge permit, a wetlands permit, and an air pollution permit. The residents eventually prevailed in 2004; however Omya owns the land, on which it made an unannounced 33-acre clear cut, and the corporation could return.
It can't be denied that Omya is a big contributor to the regional economy and beyond. It creates jobs, pays its workers competitive wages, and supplies a raw material that supports a host of other manufacturers. In our corner of Vermont we are fortunately not exposed to any of its factory's downsides nor to the threat of a mining operation defacing our hills. A line of tanker cars sitting idle and empty, while not exactly beautiful, seems innocuous enough.