USG slated to go back to be up and running on Wednesday

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USG’s Cloquet Mill Manager Bill Schmidt said Monday the company’s game plan is to have production up and running again by midday or early evening Wednesday, with shipping and loading already under way.

“We are doing surprisingly well,” said Schmidt. “It was our new flood gates that saved us.”

At the urging of the company’s insurance carrier, the mill had recently upgraded its flood containment plan to include flood gates on the entrances and ramps of its vulnerable lower levels.

Schmidt said the mill’s basement level is where much of its electrical equipment, motors and pumps are housed. Had that level flooded, it would have involved considerably more time to get the mill up and running again and would have been far more expensive to remediate.

The company is painfully familiar with that scenario – the basement of USG’s Cloquet plant flooded in the 1950s and again in the 1970s.

Last week’s sudden flood waters did manage to invade other parts of the mill, however, with some areas under as much as a foot of water. Schmidt said the losses were limited to some finished product and raw materials, and some of the motors got wet and had to be rebuilt.

Schmidt said though the mill’s losses were not insignificant, “in the grand scheme of things, it certainly could have been a whole lot worse.”

For the complete story, see this week's issue of the Pine Journal, available on newsstands on Thursday.

Tags: carlton county, news, floods