A study by a Pittsburg State University graduate student concluded that it’s cheaper for Labette County to mine and crush its own road rock than it is to buy the rock from a quarry operator.
The Labette County Commission paid John Botts $1,000 to analyze the county’s road rock mining and crushing operation. Botts was to find out if it’s cheaper for the county to crush road rock or buy it on the open market. Botts is working toward a December graduation from PSU with a master of business administration degree.
The county purchased a rock crusher in the mid-1990s and has been crushing its own road rock. Most of what the county produces is used for the gravel roads in the county. The smaller rock is used on various projects, including chipping and sealing hard-surface roads. Commissioners have been discussing the future of the rock crushing operation for quite some time, because a new crusher may cost a lot of money and it’s expensive to operate. The county now contracts with a company to blast the rock out of the quarry south of Mound Valley instead of doing the blasting itself. This saves the county money on its liability insurance policy. The commission considered buying road rock from Midwest Minerals instead of crushing rock, but Commission Chairman Doug Allen wanted a study completed to see if it’s cheaper to do so.
(Read more: Parsons Sun)