This salt plant in northeastern Alberta is closing, taking jobs and tax revenue with it
CBC
Community leaders in the County of St. Paul, Alta., are concerned about losing jobs and tax revenue after next month's closure of a salt plant that has operated continuously for more than 70 years.
The Windsor salt plant, near the hamlet of Lindbergh, 235 kilometres northeast of Edmonton, is set to close in early August.
The owner of the facility is closing it for financial reasons and plans to tear the building down. Thirty-six of 47 employees will lose their jobs when the plant is shuttered. The others will be let go over the next one to two years.
Parrish Tung, the mayor of Elk Point, 20 kilometres west of the plant, said it has provided employment to generations of workers in the area, many of whom live in his town.
"Fathers and sons work there one after another generation," Tung said this week. "I just hope that all the residents who are affected by the closure of the plant, that they will be able to find employment within our region and choose to stay in our town."
The plant is part of the community fabric, said Terri Hampson, president of the Elk Point and District Chamber of Commerce.
"If you walk down the street and you say, 'Oh, a salt plant!' — probably, somewhere in somebody's life, they've worked there," she said.
"We already have salt plant employees and their families making arrangements to leave our community because now they have to go find this specific work elsewhere."
The plant is owned by Quebec-based Windsor Salt, which is a part of Morton Salt, headquartered in Chicago.
Built in 1948 on top of a natural salt deposit, it produces table salt, water softener, agricultural salt and ice melt. The products are mainly sold in Alberta and Saskatchewan, with some also going to Ontario.
The plant produces salt from naturally occurring rock salt underground. Water is pumped underground and the salt dissolves in it. The brine solution is brought back to the surface where the water is evaporated.
Jacob Bialik, evaporative operations and project portfolio management leader at Morton Salt, said the decision to close the plant was made on June 1, but it had been under evaluation for several years.
It was strictly financial, Bialik said. The plant has not been not profitable for the past few years, and rising inflation and high transportation costs made its continuing operation no longer viable, he said.
Bialik said employees who are being let go will receive severance, but he declined to discuss the terms.