EEUU: Lehigh Valley cement industry decries construction of Staten Island cement import terminal

A union representing Lehigh Valley cement workers objects to the use of $28 million in federal stimulus funds to help build a shipping terminal that it says will make it easier to import foreign cement.

The $51.7 million terminal in Staten Island, N.Y., is being built by Cementos Lima of Peru, according to Jonathan Wolfel, representing district council No. 1 of the Lehigh Valley United Steelworkers Union.

The union represents workers at local cement plants including Essroc in Nazareth and Keystone in East Allen Township. Teamsters Local 773 represents workers at Hercules in Stockertown.

Wolfel said Thursday it doesn't make sense for U.S. tax dollars to pay for a terminal that will undercut the cement industry in Eastern Pennsylvania.

He said Thursday that as a result of the terminal's construction, foreign cement will be used to rebuild ground zero, site of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist airplane attack on the World Trade Center.

Terminal boosters say the terminal makes cement readily available to the building trades in the New York metropolitan area and eliminates heavy truck damage to local roads caused by cement haulers driving from the Lehigh Valley.

But that could cost local workers their jobs, according to Wolfel.

In a letter to another union official, Wolfel said Keystone Cement Co. recently completed a $200 million modernization and expansion of its Bath plant.

"If Keystone elected not to make this investment, the facility would have been permanently shut down and 170 (union) members would be out of work," Wolfel said. "Keystone made the investment believing that the stimulus package would result in rebuilding our roads and bridges."

Keystone officials did not return phone calls Friday.

Essroc's director of communications Marco Barbesta on Friday said of the terminal, "We're not happy about it. I don't think there is justification to bring cement in from Peru, especially with the economy in the state it is now. How many jobs will be destroyed?"

Barbesta said companies in the Lehigh Valley have been paying salaries for more than a century.

"In 1960 in the Lehigh Valley there were 13 cement companies operating 60 plants," Barbesta said. "Today there are only five companies left."

According to an article published Nov. 25, 2008, in the Staten Island Advance newspaper, New York politicians participated in the groundbreaking of the cement terminal, which would create 125 jobs.

U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer from New York said the terminal could inject as much as $60 million annually into that state's economy, according to the news report, which said up to 800,000 metric tons of cement could be delivered to the New York metropolitan area.

Schumer did not return phone calls Friday seeking comment. U.S. Sen. Bob Casey also did not return phone calls Friday seeking comment on the terminal's potential impact on the Pennsylvania's cement industry.

The terminal is expected to be competed by the end of this year.