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This salt plant in northeastern Alberta is closing, taking jobs and tax revenue with it

This salt plant in the County of St. Paul, Alta., is set to close this month after operating since 1948. (Submitted by Jacob Bialik/Morton Salt - image credit)
This salt plant in the County of St. Paul, Alta., is set to close this month after operating since 1948. (Submitted by Jacob Bialik/Morton Salt - image credit)

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."

Plant built in 1948

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.

The plant pays about $600,000 per year in county taxes, said Sheila Kitz, chief administrative officer for the County of St. Paul. That entire amount will not be immediately lost when the plant stops operations because some of it is tied to the plant's buildings. But when the plant is torn down, the tax revenue will go with it, Kitz said.

Bialik said the decision to demolish the plant was made because of its limited ability to serve any other function and "the condition of the operation." Materials will be recycled as much as possible, he said.

Truckers, nearby hamlet to feel impact

Kitz, the county's CAO, said the trucking industry in the county is likely to be affected by the closure. There are no rail lines in the county, so all the produced salt had to be transported by road.

The small hamlet of Riverview, about one kilometre southwest of the salt plant, is a former company community. Some of its residents still work there.

The salt plant has its own power plant, natural gas wells and water treatment facility and has provided infrastructure and services for the hamlet, including gas, water and wastewater services.

The county has been easing the hamlet away from its dependency on the salt plant. Water cisterns and holding tanks for wastewater were installed in each house last year.

The plant's owners have promised not to disconnect the hamlet from natural gas when the plant stops operating. The local gas supplier is working on providing supply to Riverview in the future.

"Once that is available, there is no reason that the residents in that community cannot stay in their homes," said Kitz.

She hopes that the esthetic qualities of Riverview and the County of St. Paul will attract new residents, even with the salt plant gone.

"It's a beautiful little community, actually. It's right along the North Saskatchewan River. It's quite a scenic place to live."