Eastalco Alcoa Works
The abandoned Eastalco Alcoa Works in Adamstown, Maryland
Updated August 2022 | By Matthew Christopher
Alcoa Inc.'s plant in Adamstown, Maryland, the Eastalco Alcoa Works, produced eight percent of the aluminum in the United States - about 1.25 million pounds per day, in the form of one ton cylinders known as billets. A report prepared by the Environ Corporation stated, "Eastalco’s primary aluminum reduction operations include two center-worked prebake potlines and an electrode manufacturing operation made up of a paste production and anode baking operation." Comprised of over 130 buildings on 400 acres, it operated for 35 years. The Eastalco plant was one of the largest electricity consumers in the state; in one hour the plant required thirty-five times what an average individual would use in a year. After several rounds of bitter negotiations, Eastalco closed major operations on December 19, 2005 when its contract with a regional energy company expired and rates for their electricity would have tripled. Alcoa was unable to find what they deemed to be a cost efficient source of power. Six hundred jobs were lost in the closure.
In 2006, the Eastalco Alcoa Works moved to make a gift of 27 acres of the property for a community sports complex, potentially named after the plant as a memorial. Plans stalled when the Maryland Department of the Environment pointed out that the land was a Superfund site being monitored for elevated levels of fluoride.
Eerie lighting inside the abandoned Eastalco Alcoa Works
An effort to reopen the Eastalco Alcoa Works stalled in 2007 after plans to build a dedicated power plant at the Indian Head Naval Surface Warfare Center in Charles County, MD, fell through. Alan Brody writes, "The approximately $1 billion plant would have created up to 200 permanent jobs, along with a stable energy supply and additional corporate tax revenues to Charles County." Alcoa decided that the cost was too great.
From 2011 to 2013 the facility was razed. According to Bethany Rodgers, "since the 2005 closure of the Eastalco plant, Sempra considered the property for an electric power generation station and the U.S. Bureau of Diplomatic Security weighed it for a training facility. Neither possibility panned out."
Eastalco Alcoa Works is a chapter in my book, Abandoned America: Age of Consequences.
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