Aggregates Manager

February 2014

Aggregates Manager Digital Magazine

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CalPortland's Santosh Aggregate Plant continues to scoop up profits in Oregon, one dragline bucket at a time. by Kerry Clines, Contributing Editor N orthwest of Portland, Ore., in the small town of Scappoose, is an area along the Columbia River that is situated adjacent to the Multnomah Channel. This area is rich with deposits of sand and gravel ideal for construction use. It is also the location of CalPortland's Santosh Aggregate Plant, a sand and gravel operation that has managed to stay very busy during the last few years while other operations were struggling to stay afloat. The deposit There are several theories about where the deposits of material in the area came from, but the predominant 28 AGGREGATES MANAGER February 2014 theory is that it was originally deposited by the Missoula Floods, a series of floods that occurred over a period of 50 to 60 years at the end of the last ice age. The theory suggests that the floods were the result of sudden breaks in the ice dam of Lake Missoula, a large prehistoric glacial lake formed when the southernmost edge of the Cordilleran Ice Sheet blocked the flow of the Clark Fork River in Idaho. The lake, which covered much of the western part of Montana and the panhandle of Idaho, was 3,000 square miles in size and contained approximately 500 cubic miles of water, about half the water volume of Lake Michigan. During each flood, it is believed that the peak flow rate of the water was as much as 15

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