Local leaders get inside look at Marble Falls mine industry
In this case, “underground” meant an up-close-and-personal tour of the multbillion-dollar company’s calcium carbonate mine 60 feet beneath the outskirts of Marble Falls.
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The tour was part of the Marble Falls/Lake LBJ Chamber of Commerce Leadership Highland Lakes program, an annual educational course that introduces local civic and business leaders to a number of industries, groups and programs in the Marble Falls area.
“The main purpose of this program is to educate, motivate and coordinate the future leadership of the Highland Lakes region,” Chamber Executive Director Christian Fletcher said.
The eight-month program is broken down into monthly sessions that frequently take the 25 participants outside the classroom.
The participants are nominated by their peers, officials said.
“Each session includes visits to many of the key facilities in our region,” Fletcher said. “This month’s session was focused on local business and industry.”
Wednesday’s session was the first in the program’s fourth cycle, he added.
“In the past, we toured the (Marble Falls) Business & Technology Park, but this time we wanted to focus on the things that most people probably don’t associate with Marble Falls but have a huge impact on our economy.”
Wednesday’s group started the day with a tour of Marble Falls’ Coldspring Granite Co. and Highland Haven’s Camp Champions before heading to Huber and Capitol Aggregates that afternoon.
“It’s been a really interesting program so far,” Horseshoe Bay City Manager Stan Farmer said during the Huber tour. “It’s our first day, but I’ve already learned a lot during the tour of Camp Champions.”
Farmer was one of about two dozen business and civic leaders who boarded a bus for a short tour of Huber’s Marble Falls mine, which is one of just three underground mines in Texas.
“The other two are salt mines,” Huber Mining Supervisor David Rogers said during the tour.
Rogers showed the tour group several pieces of mining equipment, including a large mechanized drill that scraped calcium carbonate — better known as limestone — from the walls of the stadium-sized mine.
Huber still carrys out daily blasts at the site, removing the limestone from the mine and crushing it on-site before moving the material to the company’s facility on Avenue N, where it’s further reduced to a fine powder.
“There are two kinds of things in the world without which the human race would not exist,” Rogers said. “Things that are mined, and things that are raised. Everything we use comes as one of those two types of things.”
While the program’s future tours may not be as dramatic as the mine tour, Fletcher said participants will likely learn just as much.
“Next month, we’re covering arts and education,” he said. “We also have sessions on city and county government, and then there’s a separate session on state government where we’ll go to the Capitol in Austin and meet with our state representatives.”
Fletcher said the program will wrap up in May with a graduation banquet before kicking off again the following November.
“We hope that it’s mutually beneficial for everyone involved,” he said. “It gives people the tools they need to respond to the present and future needs of the Highland Lakes, and it allows them to network with other people in the community.”
chris@thepicayune.com