An industrial Brigadoon?
There is more than ghostly reminiscence going on down at the old aluminum plant...
Lou Marzeles
News Editor
A bulletin board still hangs on a wall at the Columbia Gorge Aluminum Company-also known over the years as Goldendale Aluminum, Martin Marietta Aluminum, and multiple other names that all reflect its both busy and troubled history.
On the board remain little notes from employees for the attention of other employees, looking for all the world as if they were written yesterday, instead of six or more years ago since the last remaining work at the plant finally shut down. There are notices about cars for sale, rooms needed or being offered, and car-pooling possibilities. They remain board notices never to be answered, a now-muted testimony to the one-time bustle of the place, when at its peak some 1,200 people drew their paychecks from the company.
"It ran 24 hours a day, seven days a week," recalls Mac Seyhanli, whose tenure at the plant goes back 38 years. He still works out of a small office there, along with a small crew that keeps the place maintained.
Maintained for what?
"We get quite a lot of people looking at the plant for a lot of possible uses," Seyhanli says. "The current owners are very committed to keeping the place ready for use."
The plant, in all its sprawling former glory, awaits a coming new emergence into industrial visibility, like a commercial Brigadoon, that fabled village that appears only once every hundred years.
The last six years, to many in the area, have felt like a hundred years, and more. The coming of new business there could feel like it's taking another hundred. But the effort to bring new business is serious and well-directed; the Klickitat County Economic Development Office, headed by Mike Cannon, has been very focused on attracting companies to the plant.
"Today we're looking at bringing in smaller companies to take smaller portions of the place," says Seyhanli. "We're not expecting to get one big company." Already two businesses are running in small portions of the plant; one is a tool-maker out of Spokane, and the other is making scrap metal out of the plant's old cells, huge bathtub-like containers used in the making of aluminum.
"We aren't going to get another aluminum manufacturer," Seyhanli points out. "The worldwide market for aluminum continues to grow significantly, but plants making it have continued to decrease in number throughout North America and Europe. Plants are going up at a rapid rate across China, however, as that country sees more demand for aluminum."
Seyhanli described what happened to the business of aluminum in the U. S. and how that impacted the plant here. "When the plant was first built in the '70s," he says, "energy was cheaper. The plant went up close to the [John Day] dam, for ready access to energy. Initially BPA [Bonneville Power Administration] was very interested in providing energy accommodations to large businesses such as this, and energy costs were manageable."
Over the years, however, BPA changed its approach. Always highly professional in his demeanor, Seyhanli nonetheless conveys just a hint of emotion as he talks about BPA's shift. "They decided to provide energy only to other major energy agencies, such as the PUDs. We still have the electric lines where BPA brought in power adjacent to the plant, but toward the end we were drawing primarily from the PUD lines."
Energy costs in the 1990s and early 2000s began skyrocketing. "Near the end, the company was losing between $250,000 and $500,000 a day," Seyhanli recalls. Expensive power made it impossible to keep the business going, even as demand for aluminum worldwide continued to climb.
The plant shut down its last operations, then only 10 percent of its once-enormous activity and output, in 2003. It had been such a lifeblood to so much of the community that when some speak of it today, the residue of alternately pleasant and bitter nostalgia is almost palpable. And while many look to a time when the huge buildings down at the old aluminum plant can once again engage local employees, the prospect is moderated by a realization that the area cannot again become so totally dependent on one major employer.
"It's traumatic to close a plant," Seyhanli says. Driving from one end of the enormous facility to the other, showing the key features that have been his workplace home for 38 years, he clearly knows the truth of that statement.
Devastation from disease plagued early settlers too
Don McManman
For The Sentinel
You've got to wonder what W.H. and Martha Crawford would say today about the H1N1 influenza vaccine and our anguish about using it. Of course, their testimony would be 131 years old, but it could be summarized into five powerful statements.
You can find all five in ranching country south of Hermiston, Ore.-not unlike most of Klickitat County-in a dusty cemetery, headstones tilted, some broken, wooden crosses moldering into dust. There you'll find the Crawford family summarized in marble-each headstone a tragedy, but together a catastrophe sufficient to crush your soul.
Five kids born to the Crawfords had been buried within 11 days. The first was Ella, who died on Sept. 18, 1878. Her headstone said she was "4 y's 8 m's & 8 d's" old.
The next day, Archie died. He was five.
The following day, Allie, age seven, died.
Then, a pause, surely a reason to hope for the parents. But, diphtheria has an incubation period of up to five days. Exactly five days after Allie died, Elva followed. She was the eldest of the kids ("9y's 7m's & 7 d's") to be buried.
Four days later, on Sept. 29, 1878, Willie died. He was the youngest (1 y'r & 19 d's).
They were some of the earliest settlers east of the Cascades, likely pioneers who found the western meadows growing a bit too cramped. They bounced eastward, to land that had once been viewed as worthless but, for them, then held promise.
This thin valley held a year-around creek with good bottom land for hay and uplands for winter wheat or grazing, the kind of place a man could build a family and a dream. But during the summer of 1878, Bannocks, led by Buffalo Horn, began moving north, killing isolated settlers and burning cabins. White men galloped frantically, spreading warning and rumors.
Funny thing about diphtheria: it spreads person to person, whether they be adult or child. But adults generally don't die. Kids do, and it's a particularly horrifying death. First a sore throat, then a stiff neck, and then gradual strangulation begins.
Ella started to wheeze as swelling slowly clamped her windpipe closed. Undoubtedly, the Crawfords listened as each wheeze grew fainter, further apart. And then death. Each of the other children followed-each awake as death edged closer, each scratching for breath, and their parents could do nothing but watch and listen.
The nearest doctor was 60 miles away, in Pendleton. He would have never arrived on time for the first deaths. And if he did, there was nothing medicine could do back then. There was no effective treatment for diphtheria, and no vaccine to prevent it. The disease killed everywhere. A daughter of Queen Victoria-Princess Alice-died the same year as the Crawford kids.
You'll find diphtheria's legacy today: it's the D in DPT, a vaccine most kids receive today: Diphtheria-Pertussis-Tetanus.
As for W.H. and Martha Crawford, there is no headstone for them next to their five children. They must have moved away from the valley, away from the shadow of death. Perhaps they couldn't face the place that had killed their kids.
Could you?
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