Aggregates Manager Digital Magazine
Issue link: http://read.dmtmag.com/i/485104
AGGREGATES MANAGER April 2015 24 S outhwest Louisiana is dotted with lakes, swamps, and bayous, and boasts a very healthy 'gator popula- tion, but it is also an area where large deposits of sand and gravel can be found, thanks to the meanderings of the Mississippi River. Most of these deposits have been mined for years and some have even been mined out of materials that were in demand in the past. However, Trinity Materials' Indian Village Plant, located about 20 miles north of Lake Charles, has turned what previous miners left behind into a valuable product. In the beginning… Aggregate production began at Indian Village Plant about 65 years ago when Gifford-Hill Co. built the original processing plant on the site. There was a large sand and gravel deposit in the bottom of a small lake, so the company brought in a dredge and began pumping it out. At that particular time, there was not much of a market for sand, so once the gravel was screened out, the sand that would not sell was pumped back into the lake. In 1989, after most of the gravel had been removed and Gifford-Hill ceased operations, Lafarge came in and built a new plant. Trinity Materials, Inc. bought the plant five years later and started processing the sand that had been pumped back into the lake years earlier. Now, with southwest Louisiana caught up in the latest oil and gas boom, that sand has found a market. "Right now, southwest Louisiana is booming all the way to Baton Rouge, but more so here," says Ezra Young, area manager for Trinity Ma- terials, Inc. Young has been in the aggregate business for 33 years and manages Indian There's a method to the madness of mining sand and gravel in the marshy areas of southwest Louisiana. by Kerry Clines, Contributing Editor Trinity Materials' Indian Village Plant dredges and processes sand from a small lake in southwest Louisiana where the recent oil and gas boom has brought new life to the construction industry. Diggin'