As another birthday passes today for the Umatilla Chemical Depot’s incinerator site, officials are optimistic for the future of the plant.

The project, which began June 10, 1997, has had a rollercoaster of a year. Construction continued despite bomb threats, multiple unannounced inspections, leaking munitions and more.

Depot Commander Lt. Col. Tom Woloszyn said the last 12 months moved at a “real demanding pace.”

“I think we’ve been tested,” Woloszyn said. “I don’t think we’re complete but we’re getting better.”

His staff learned from the experiences, and he said depot operations personnel are at a “high level of readiness.”

“My job now is to keep us at this level of readiness,” Woloszyn added.

He called the union workers the “unsung heroes” of the project.

“This isn’t just any plant,” he noted with pride. The plant has many safety controls and redundancies built in, which add to the complexity and necessary precision of work there.

In the next year, which will be Woloszyn’s last, he expects an increase in staff at the depot. Now at 170, the commander said his staff should increase by about 120 in the next 12 months. Those jobs include ammunition handlers, security, laundry personnel and more.

Three main tasks will define the next year, Woloszyn said. Those are: complying with environmental procedures such as storing hazardous wastes, working to inform the community of operations at the depot and the incinerator plant, and day-to-day operations.

Steve DePew, the Army’s site project manager, said now that the complex is more than two-thirds complete, what remains are the “fine details.”

Construction was scheduled for completion in November, but Raytheon Demilitarization Co., the contractor building the complex, submitted a new schedule that moves completion back until May 2001. The Army is reviewing that schedule to see if the delays can be mitigated, DePew said. He remains confident that incineration will begin in 2002.

The delays can partially be attributed to lost days for things like an unexplained incident in September when more than 30 crafts workers became ill from what they said were chemical agent fumes. Tests from the Army and other agencies failed to confirm such claims.

These events slowed construction a bit, but changes to schedules and plans are parts of life when working on a large construction project. DePew and Loren Sharp, Raytheon’s acting project manager, said bigger projects like getting an air-monitoring lab and extra pollution-abatement technology online has added time to the project.

The managers said morale remains strong on the project, even with the impending acquisition of Raytheon Demilitarization Co. by Morrison Knudson, a Boise engineering and construction company. The sale, which should be completed this month, will put the Umatilla depot under the same management as three other depots.

In the coming months, the managers said the work force will shift greatly. More than 1,000 crafts workers work at the site now, but in the next year, they will be replaced by some 400 maintenance and operation personnel, DePew said. Many of these workers will be hired from local ranks, though some will come from other sites such as the Johnston Island complex. The site, about 800 miles southwest of Hawaii, is scheduled for closure by the end of 2001, DePew said.

Looking further into their crystal ball, the managers predicted the beginning of cold commissioning – making sure pumps and other equipment at the incinerator complex work correctly before the plant is operational. Not long after that could be a ribbon-cutting event to celebrate the completion of construction, DePew said.

Also in the next year will be an increased emphasis on safety. With a recent leak at an incinerator complex in Utah, both Sharp and DePew said workers will be trained extensively. Sharp said many of his control staff have spent 10 weeks of additional training at a facility in Maryland.

“It will almost become a contingency we’ll train to, to make sure that thing doesn’t happen – not just here, but anywhere,” DePew said.