Stop us if you've heard this one. Hydro, a century-old Fortune 500 company that came to the area in 2002 when it acquired VAW, will be shutting down its Ellenville casthouse operations sometime this autumn. The move, announced in a press release last Friday, explained that the company will either sell or shut the facility down, leading to the loss of 55 more jobs from the southern Ulster area.

This latest announcement comes just four months after the multinational corporation announced it would be closing the extrusion facility located in Wawarsing – eliminating 262 jobs in the process. Currently, only a few workers remain to dismantle factory equipment or prepare it for sale.

As their release states, "At the time of the extrusion announcement, Hydro stated their intention to continue serving the extrusion billet market from Ellenville. The Ellenville casthouse had recently undergone a more than $20 million renovation and expansion, significantly improving plant productivity, safety and quality and making it one of the most advanced facilities in North America."

While the release states that the company would prefer to keep the Ellenville site open, Yogi Shergill, head of Hydro's North American Metal unit cites transportation and utility costs as well as "weaknesses in the North American extrusion market" as justifications for closing the facility.

Hydro goes on to state that it, "plans to make Ellenville employees aware of openings at its other North American locations, and will facilitate relocation of Ellenville personnel to other locations if they are successful in their application."

The move to shut down the casthouse operation came as a mild surprise to some workers from Hydro's extrusion facility who believed that the company's desire to keep the casthouse in operation squelched the possibility of selling it. That argument, plus the stated investment of $20 million, made it difficult to reconcile the announcement of the facility's closure.

At Monday's village board meeting when asked his thoughts about the casthouse's closing, Ellenville Mayor Jeff Kaplan said, "We're disappointed. It's sad to say that we're not surprised." Kaplan went on to say that Hydro's closing rather than selling the facility is something that needs to be explored on a national level. "Big businesses benefit too much from closing their doors rather than selling their facilities to the highest bidder. It pays for them [large businesses] to keep their doors closed."

Hydro officials said that they are exploring possible deals to sell the entire Ellenville facility but that they had to move forward with shutting the operation down. Village of Ellenville Trustee Steve Krulick took the announced closing as an indication that the most successful projects are those that start locally. "This is an object lesson. Things like IBM and big manufacturing are not coming back in to the area. And even if they do, there's always a chance that they'll 'pull a Hydro'. We need to focus on local businesses and local talent."

For employees who do not choose to or do not qualify for relocation opportunities, they will be offered severance packages as well as "outplacement assistance." Details of how these packages will be disbursed have not yet been finalized.

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