The Northeast Section AIPG
Presents the 2000 Spring Meeting
At Blue Circle Cement
Route 9W Ravena, NY
12:30 p.m. to 8:00 p.m.
Wednesday, May 17, 2000

The Spring Meeting will begin with a field trip to Blue Circle Cement to tour a limestone rock quarry and a cement plant. A joint meeting with the Hudson Mohawk Professional Geologists' Association will follow the field trip. Blue Circle Cement is one of four active cement quarries in New England and New York. The quarry mines limestones from the Middle Devonian Helderberg Group, a group of limestones with varying chemical compositions. The lowest two formations, the Manlius and Coeymans limestones, are the main units being mined for cement raw material. Overlying the Manlius and Coeymans limestones are the Kalkberg and New Scotland formations, two relatively impure limestones that have high silica contents. The Kalkberg and New Scotland Formations are stripped off the underlying units and are either stockpiled as overburden waste or used for aggregate by Callanan Industries. Geologists on the trip will be able to see the complete sequence of formations from the base of the Manlius to the top of the Becraft. Within the sequence fossil humters may be able to find the type fossil for the Coeymans Formation (Gypidula coeymanensis).