The Army National Guard has awarded the Environmental Security Award for Cultural Resources Management (CRM) to the Oregon National Guard for fiscal year 2020. The award highlights the on-going efforts of Jim Arnold and the Environmental Branch team for their work in Cultural Resources Management at Camp Umatilla.

HERMISTON — The Oregon National Guard has been recognized for its cultural resources management at Camp Umatilla.

The guard received the Environmental Security Award for Cultural Resources Management for the 2020 fiscal year from the Army National Guard for its work in preserving the historical aspects of the site while upgrading it into a modern training facility.

Camp Umatilla is located west of Hermiston on part of the former Umatilla Chemical Depot. The army depot opened in 1941 as the United States prepared to enter World War II, and began storing chemical weapons in 1962. It was decommissioned in 2015, with parts preserved for Camp Umatilla, a wildlife refuge and industrial development.

According to a news release from the Oregon National Guard, the award recognizes the “remarkable efforts” of Jim Arnold and the rest of the Guard’s Environmental Branch team to enter into an agreement with the Oregon State Historic Preservation Office and other stakeholders for a preservation plan that included establishment of a 23-acre historic district at Camp Umatilla, comprised of 18 buildings from the early days of the depot.

“Without the prior relationships we have established over the years with the State Historic Preservation Office and positive government-to-government relationships with the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, this agreement would have been much harder to accomplish,” Arnold said in the news release.

At the same time, the National Guard has built a new Regional Training Institute at Camp Umatilla, including new barracks, dining facilities, day rooms, small arms ranges and troop maneuver areas.