[movermike] movermike: The Northwest Aluminum Industry

[Email subscription to blog articles]

Posted by movermike:
The Northwest Aluminum Industry
http://www.movermike.com/posts/1158125112.shtml


   [1]Ted Sickinger wrote Saturday in the business section of The
   Oregonian about the debate over continuing subsidized power to the
   aluminum industry in the Northwest at what is essentially cost.
   Aluminum companies (had) 20-year rights to low-cost power as part of
   the Northwest Power and Conservation Act of 1980, which expired in
   2000. Bonneville has been supplying some power at cost and that may
   end in 2011.

   This is part of the story that jumped out at me:

     The aluminum industry is a shadow of its former regional presence.
     Although it once employed about 8,000 workers in 10 smelters
     scattered around the region, six of those plants have closed
     permanently, and the other four are either closed or operating at a
     fraction of capacity.

   The Northwest, due to abundant hydro power, has always had cheap
   electricity compared to California or the East Coast. I wasn't aware
   on a conscious level, how much the aluminum industry here had
   declined. Why couldn't industry survive on cheap power? [2]Sightline,
   a Seattle environmental think tank,

     thinks the 2001 west-coast power crunch shut down the industry then
     production just shifted somewhere else, where power, land, or labor
     was cheaper.

   The [3]Association of Washinton Business agrees:

     The California energy crisis of 2001 coupled with an economic
     downturn suddenly made the industry no longer viable in the
     Northwest. Mills throughout the region started to shut down.

   It is amazing that an industry that was such a part of the Pacific
   Northwest since the 1950s has suddenly disappeared, even with massive
   subsidies. If we weren't such a diversified economy, we could look
   like those towns shuttered when the textile mills closed or the Mid
   west, when auto plants closed. I am shaking my head; even with massive
   subsidies, aluminum companies still failed.

   [4]Aluminum Companies
   [5]Northwest Power and Conservation Act of 1980 [6]Finance [7]Mover
   Mike

References

   1. http://www.oregonlive.com/search/index.ssf?/base/business/1157770534289280.xml?oregonian?fng&coll=7
   2. http://www.sightline.org/daily_score/archive/2006/08/02/aluminum-not-foiled
   3. http://www.awb.org/cgi-bin/absolutenm/templates/?a=1067&z=3
   4. http://technorati.com/tag/Aluminum+Companies
   5. http://technorati.com/tag/Northwest+Power+and+Conservation+Act+of+1980
   6. http://technorati.com/tag/Finance
   7. http://technorati.com/tag/Mover+Mike