Eugene Sand may be a model for job loss fears.

Byline: Diane Dietz The Register-Guard

Eugene-Springfield needs rock, gravel industry officials say - about 2 million tons a year for roads, bridges, hospitals and houses.

Big projects are on the horizon, including PeaceHealth's RiverBend regional medical center and reconstruction of the Interstate-5/Belt Line inter- change.

Delta Sand & Gravel is one of four gravel companies mining at the confluence of the Willamette and McKenzie rivers. The confluence pits provide the great majority of river rock for the metro market.

The community needs Delta to expand its mine, said George Staples, the company's risk manager and attorney.

Eugene-Springfield needs jobs, too, and Delta's workers earn $15 to $30 an hour, plus company-paid health premiums for workers and their spouses, Staples said.

The Delta operation and the Morse Brothers asphalt plant on Delta's site employ 200 people, Staples said. Their jobs with the existing Delta pits are good for another decade, but after that the enterprise is going to need more rock, he said.

"I'm concerned about some of the fine young people we've got here that need family wage jobs. I'd sure feel better if I knew they had 20 years ahead of them," Staples said.

All these arguments may have a familiar ring to those who followed Eugene Sand & Gravel's contentious effort from 1999 to 2003 to open a new gravel mine along River Road north of Eugene. During that process, Eugene Sand President Mike Alltucker maintained that without his proposed new mine, his company would close and 200 workers would be jobless.

But the company is still around, and still has about 200 workers.

Losing the bid for the new mine was painful, Alltucker said last week. The company had to reinvent itself, changing its emphasis from mining and production to concrete sales and construction. Along the way, as many as 50 employees lost their jobs, he said.

But the company soon increased its purchase of rock from rival Wildish Sand & Gravel, which has hundreds of acres of gravel reserves on the north side of the McKenzie River. Today, Eugene Sand's work force is back near the 200 mark.

In the metro area gravel market, the job-loss argument is "fallacious," said Ed Whitelaw, president of Eugene-based ECONorthwest, an economic consulting firm. Several years ago Whitelaw opposed the proposed Eugene Sand pits.

If Delta were to close, another gravel producer probably would hire Delta's workers to pick up the production slack, Whitelaw said. "But, of course, it's always Chicken Little."