I found that on Wikipedia. It refers only to the production of Portland cement. Regionally, there are river dredges that bring up aggregate materials, and they are replenished by river flow. Transporting all of that is a fairly monumental task, that goes largely unnoticed. Local consumption of concrete is not huge, but there are nearby facilities for mixing aggregate and cement, and trucking it to sites, as there necessarily must be.
I recall a big to-do about some of the rebuilding in Afghanistan, when the requirement for America-sourced materials ran into the realities of shipping cement and aggregate half way around the planet.
The whole reason for using concrete is it’s high mass, low cost, and most generic material available for structural purposes. Ideal for foundations, partly because it is initially cast in place as a fluid, filling voids in the excavation for a solid foundation. Ideal in compression, its use also happens to reduce many other external environmental impacts.
Regarding he aggregate, regional geologists can and do provide statistical analyses of aggregate location, allowing engineers to specify the least cost general purpose aggregate base mix used beneath foundations as sub-base course, lessening the volume of some structural cross sections. Some locations have more angular aggregate, others have more river-rounded aggregate.
This article merely manifests leftists are searching for any portion of any common industry they can attack to try and extort funds. That’s why they sought to universalize healthcare. That’s why they promote unions to tackle Labor.
If they could tax the air you breathe, space you occupy, and water you drink, they’ll attempt it.
A friend of mine spent a year in the Stans commanding a unit that spent much of its time purchasing concrete and gravel for Afghanistan.
He said it was his first deployment without a gun and with more business suits than uniforms