Casper Star-Tribune from Casper, Wyoming • 21

West Wednesday, November 30, 2005 Casper Star-Tribune B7 Plant closure has workers wondering what's ahead 1 within six months. "It's scary, is all I can say," said Judy Brown, who works in accounts payable at the pickle plant Vasquez is thinking about moving to Denver, near his son. He's 55, too young to retire and too old to look for a minimum-wage job. The pay here starts at $11 an hour, a very good wage for La Junta. "I'm not gonna go work for $5 an hour," Vasquez said.

Martinez, who started at the plant in 1964, is thinking about drawing on early Social Security- "There are no other jobs here," she said. There soon will be new jobs in nearby Rocky Ford, where Harvest Foods is converting an old onion-processing plant into a burrito factory. It will open in March and hire 150 people during the next two years. Chief Executive Officer Bill McKnight said he's been flooded with calls from jobseekers. "We've had 200 applications in the last week," he said.

La Junta has its Christmas decorations up, strung on poles along U.S. 50. But spirits aren't so high along Colorado Avenue, the main street. "Whatever happens at the pickle plant will affect everyone," said Glenn Parker, who lives in Rocky Ford. "Our agricultural community has gone to heck.

If we're not an agricultural community and we're not a manufacturing community, what do we have to survive?" Nancy Boatwright, who owns an arts-and-crafts supply store downtown, is more optimistic. Perhaps companies will realize how low the cost of living is, what a good place it is to raise a family, she said. That's another worry for city leaders can young people stay and make a living? Many Lamar teens choose to leave, but eventually they return, Lamar High School Principal Allan Medina said. "We're going to do everything we can so that if our kids want to stay, there's something for them," Medina said. Juan Torres and wife Clementina Torres eat lunch at the pickle plant in Foods, one of La Junta's major employers, closes the plant in February.

David Bitton, AP their jobs when Bay Valley i By DEEDEE CORRELL The Gazette LA JUNTA, Colo. The cutoff date for life as a lot of people in this town know it is Feb. 3. Two months from now, the last batch of brine-soaked cucumbers will roll up the conveyor belts at the pickle factory, grinding toward the slicer that will make them into hamburger dill chips or the blenders that mash them into sweet relish. Mary Martinez will run her yellow-stained hands over her last pickles, picking out the rejects.

Clementina Torres will wedge her last gherkin into a bottle, her husband, Juan, will tighten his last lid and the pickle plant where generations of lower Arkansas Valley residents have worked will close. That day will leave 153 people without jobs, a critically high number in this town of about 7,500 a number made more devastating because the region's other major employer, a bus plant in Lamar with 300 workers, also is closing. Altogether, 450 living-wage jobs wUl vanish from a valley where work already is tough to find. "I have all my life here in this place," said Santiago Vasquez, a foreman who's worked here for 33 years. The first bomb hit Nov.

15: Neoplan USA, a bus manufacturing plant and one 6f Lamar's largest employers, will close Jan. 13 because it couldn't raise $10 million in new capital No one was shocked; rumors had circulated for a year. That didn't make it any easier for the town of 8,500, 60 miles east of La Junta on U.S. 50. "Please don't let that happen to us," Bud Ozzello, principal at La Junta High School, thought that night.

La Junta is as dependent on Bay Valley Foods as Lamar is on Neoplan. Although it's changed ownership over the years, the plant has long sat just off the highway, with a rock landscaped sign reading "We (heart) pickles." Few here haven't worked at the pickle plant. The mayor, for example, spent his summers as a Loons 6 W.A.C. It will help you save for tomorrow, while you borrow for today! Federal Credit Union 770 E. Collins Casper 307- 265-1779 Don't want to load and haul your RECYCLING? I Call us We'll pick it up for you! Call Travis at 265-3453 or I with rates low A ii La Junta, Colo.

They will both lose Like the entire valley, La Junta has struggled before, he said, especially when the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad closed its district office in the 1980s. When a manufacturer of plumbing fittings closed, 400 people lost their jobs. City officials reacted by attracting other companies a manufacturer of school lockers and a bolt-and-nut plant. "What I'm trying to say is we made up for the void," Rizzuto said. "We will make up for the loss by recruiting somebody else." His counterpart in Lamar, Nelva Heath, is taking a similar positive approach.

She has to, she said. The closure means a $10 million reduction in payroll I i I and a significant loss of property taxes. Both towns have plenty of offers of help. Rep. John Salazar, toured the pickle plant last week, and state officials have called.

In Prowers County, the Southeast Colorado Enterprise Development Inc. will offer incentives to companies to relocate to the area, director Janet Anderson said. "First you've got to find someone with an interest in a rural area," Anderson said. "That's very difficult." Even under the best scenario, another plant probably wouldn't open in the next couple years, she said. That leaves hundreds of people without a paycheck.

If they don't act fast, Heath predicted, most will be gone HiVlf i i I 1 Vtt it 11 who has worked there 40 years. One question immediately loomed: What would they do? They'll find someone to take Bay Valley Foods' place, that's what they'll do, Mayor Don Riz-zuto said. "We can't take the time to panic," he said. "We're marketing hard nationwide already." Rizzuto ticks off the reasons other manufacturers should find the plant attractive: It's a state-of-the-art facility with new parking lots. The distribution center is brand-new.

It's strategically located on a direct route to the Front Range and near the planned Ports-to-Plains highway. "You can't look at the glass as half-empty. It's lialf-fulL and let's fill it," Rizzuto said. teen cutting green beans, back when the factory also did other vegetables. Many people have worked there 20 years or more; whole families draw their paychecks from Bay Valley Foods, where the air is sharp with vinegar and salt, and when employees go to the bank after work, someone usually teases, "It smells like pickles in here." Nov.

16, the day after Neo- Ijlan's announcement, the pick-e plant manager called a meeting. Martinez figured it would be another safety lecture. She realized something was wrong when she saw the big boss standing there. They were, company officials told them, victims of higher costs and a waning taste for pickles. "We all cried," said Martinez, GiASS proved Gifts Free 800-808-5745 i 9)(iflr nun iwUMimiliii Mill in in gUilUammmd i CIA' H41I MY CREDIT AND EMPLOYMENT NAME: FIRST MIDDLE LAST ADDRESS NO! STREET APT OTY STATE ZIP HOW LONG PAYMENT SOC.SEC.NO.

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