For One Marin Firm, Deluge Meant a Flood of Business
Jim Gardner
San Francisco Business Times
From the January 6, 2006 print edition
Talk of the town
This week's North Bay flooding proved to a windfall of high drama for at least one local business, the San Rafael Rock Quarry.
The quarry took the unusual step of opening its doors Saturday when a state of emergency created an urgent need for its products, releasing it from a wide range of court-ordered restrictions on hours of operation and truck and barge traffic.
Many employees were pondering their New Year's Eve holiday plans over breakfast when the call came in to report to work, pronto.
Suddenly trucks were being loaded with boulders, called riprap, to make emergency repairs to Marin's levee system. Some employees were also quickly dispatched to Sacramento to help address problems with levees in the Sacramento River Delta system and keep state officials apprised of how things were holding up.
The quarry is used to being on call when levees are breached in the Sacramento River Delta system, but this week's flooding hit much closer to home.
"I was personally surprised to see levees breached in Marin County," said Aimi Dutra, community relations director for quarry owner, the Dutra Group. "We were a bit surprised, but pleased we could help."
"This has been an extraordinarily frightening time for all our neighbors whose homes, businesses and livelihood have been put in jeopardy by this treacherous storm," Dutra said.
Still, she and her colleagues also knew that if Marin was having problems, the situation was much worse elsewhere in the delta.
And a few dry days doesn't end the crisis. Quarry workers are likely to find themselves putting their nose to the grindstone again as demand for sand and gravel is triggered by further levee erosion and road repairs in the coming days.
Already, the quarry along side the Bay in east Marin has provided about 10,000 tons of rock to make repairs in Marin, and a few hundred thousand tons is likely to be needed elsewhere.
"We're not out of the woods yet in regards to the delta," Dutra said, noting that a similar emergency last year had the quarry operating around the clock for a month.
"We will be on emergency stand-by status as more and more counties, including Marin, are declared disasters areas," said Dutra. "We're continually getting calls for rock from islands located in the Delta.
"Fortunately for the county, the quarry has the resources and the response time to react to these catastrophes as they happen, wherever they happen," Dutra said. "We appreciate the patience and understanding of our quarry neighbors, as we try to respond to these requests for assistance as quickly as possible."
That cuts both ways, or at least it should. Perhaps performing such a vital function might win the quarry some kudos with those neighbors, some of whom have waged a long campaign against the aggregates operator in their midst. On the other hand, don't count on it.
-- Compiled by Jim Gardner. Contributor: Mark Calvey.
© 2006 American City Business Journals Inc.
Contact:
Aimi Dutra
Dutra Group
Phone: (415) 458-5473
Email: adutra@dutragroup.com