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I would like to thank the employee’s that helped
our stripping department this past winter. We
had two job sites going full time
simultaneously, consisting of cleaning the
stone-wash settling pond at Bowser Quarry and a
west reserve expansion stripping set at Moscow
Quarry. A small crew also spent time at Montour
cleaning the stone wash settling ponds. At
Bowser, we moved a total of 66,779 cubic yards
of material from January 14, 2006, through
February 18, 2006. This material consists of
fines that are separated through the washing
operation and sent to our “settling ponds” to
settle out and allow clean water to be
discharged. As you can see, the consistency of
this material is often like thick pudding.
Freezing and thawing weather conditions often
create quite a challenge handling this type of
material through the winter months. To
accomplish the above-mentioned projects, we
split our stripping crew in two groups and
paired each group with members from crushing and
washing plants. Wash pond cleanup projects were
performed by: Pete Caspers, Jamie Rundle (Tim
McPherson’s crushing crew), Shawn Pierce
(Russell Heinsius’s crushing crew), and Gary
Peterson (C.R. South crushing crew), working
together with two full-time stripping crew
members, Curt Budde and Steve Frett.
At Moscow, we moved a total of 180,367 cubic
yards of material from January 21, 2006, through
March 11, 2006. Overall, the weather cooperated
and helped in our stripping efforts. “Grubbing”
trees was the task accomplished during the first
week we were there. At the Moscow site, there
is a lot of overburden to remove and a long
distance to move material to the fill area. The
Moscow project was accomplished with the help
of: Tom Hefflefinger, Lance Zerbe and Jamie
Rundle (Tim McPherson’s crushing crew), Terry
Adler (Portable wash plant) and Gary Peterson
(C.R. South crushing crew), combined with
full-time stripping crew members, Aaron Fier,
Daryl Holdgrafer, Curt Budde, Shawn Flagel,
Steve Frett and Brandon Kemp. Thanks go out to
all of those listed above. We accomplished a
lot of work together safely and efficiently,
with no accidents. We also took the opportunity
to task train our help on several different
pieces of equipment, ending up with two very
versatile crews, allowing us to accomplish our
winter stripping goals.
Thank you again for all the teamwork and effort
everyone put into these projects. It was
greatly appreciated. |
