Tri-Cities gets chance for extreme makeover

By Annette Cary, Herald staff writer

The Tri-Cities is in a position most towns across the country can only envy as the nation spends billions of dollars in an attempt to bail out the economy.

The Hanford nuclear reservation, a pivotal driver of the Tri-Cities economy with a roughly $2 billion annual budget, is receiving some of the first economic stimulus money from the federal government under the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act.

In the next two years, the Department of Energy plans to spend an additional $1.96 billion at Hanford, with $1.57 billion arriving Tuesday.

"The recovery money is like getting an additional year of federal funding for Hanford cleanup," said Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., who's credited with the work that led to cleanup cash for DOE weapons sites like Hanford to be included in the stimulus package.

The spending boost not only will create or retain about 4,000 jobs through September 2011, it also has the potential to allow the Tri-Cities, if it works fast and is clever, to build a new economic base.

Hanford workers now hold about 10 percent of the jobs in the Tri-Cities, cleaning up massive contamination left from World War II and Cold War production of plutonium for nuclear weapons. Those same workers also collect about 20 percent of the wages paid in the Tri-Cities, according to the Tri-City Development Council.

Hanford workers' discretionary spending attracts national retailers, restaurant chains and housing developers. TRIDEC officials estimate, based on national averages, that each new Hanford job will create 1.8 service jobs in areas such as retail, real estate, construction and medical care.

Hiring plans in flux

Hanford already employs about 9,750 workers, according to DOE. That doesn't include another 4,000 working at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, which also is receiving millions in stimulus money.

While hiring plans remain in flux, it appears new workers could include roughly a 50-50 split between hands-on employees -- such as construction workers, decontamination and decommissioning workers and nuclear chemical operators -- and those the contractors sometimes call professional staff such as engineers, accountants, purchasers, schedulers, managers and office staff.

Much work also will be done by subcontractors, both by expanding their assigned work and by awarding new subcontracts.

The same boom that will bring new residents to the Mid-Columbia for Hanford jobs and keep many current workers on the job also could lead to a corresponding bust in late 2011 -- when DOE is required to have the last penny of the $1.96 billion spent.

However, TRIDEC and other local officials hope that won't happen because DOE's stimulus spending plan calls not only for accelerating cleanup work and shrinking the contaminated portion of Hanford, but also for planning the site's future.

DOE is proposing to create an energy park to produce and demonstrate new energy technologies, a top priority of the Obama administration.

"If we do it right, we should start picking up new jobs as soon as these (stimulus money) jobs come down," said Gary Petersen, TRIDEC vice president for Hanford programs.

Hundreds of openings

In the meantime, the Tri-Cities faces the happy prospect of hundreds of near-term job openings, as well as keeping existing jobs.

CH2M Hill Plateau Remediation Co., which expects to receive $1.3 billion of the Hanford stimulus funding, will be able to retain about 300 workers in its transuranic waste program, which had been expected to ramp down.

CH2M also plans to hire about 350 people in the next six weeks, many through its subcontractors. It doesn't appear there's a shortage of people wanting the jobs, as evidenced by a job fair the company held in Richland on April 3-4, where 3,500 people submitted resumes. The company had expected just several hundred to attend.

Many of the job seekers were from the Mid-Columbia, but the fair also attracted people from all over the Pacific Northwest, Nevada, California and Idaho.

"We had a lot of people who had been laid off from different places," said Dee Millikin, spokeswoman for CH2M Hill, who described many of the applicants as "very well qualified."

Contractors that are hiring also have been recruiting at university job fairs across the nation and through their corporate offices. Both Bechtel and URS have work ending elsewhere that could free up workers for Hanford.

Many of the workers are likely to come from the Mid-Columbia.

For instance, a Renewable Energy Corp. construction project in Moses Lake is winding down and some of those workers could commute to Hanford for work, said Mike Keizer, president of the Central Washington Building Trades Council. Also, many construction workers already in the area need work because of the downturn in the construction industry.

Other workers are expected to be found with subcontractors, either in the Mid-Columbia or across the nation. For instance, CH2M Hill Plateau Remediation Co. did not offer jobs to 63 employees at Fluor Government Group when it took over central Hanford cleanup in September.

Bright spots ahead

Although many of those hired with stimulus money could be looking for work again in a few years, there are a few bright spots.

With the average age of Hanford workers now 54, there will be opportunities for the new workers to stay on when older Hanford workers retire. Also, DOE's Office of River Protection expects to be building the work force that will be needed as it moves toward treating tank waste for permanent disposal.

Three Hanford contractors -- CH2M Hill, Washington Closure Hanford and Washington River Protection Solutions -- will receive most of the Hanford stimulus money.

But Fluor Hanford also could be hiring as it provides increased services to other contractors, from installing telephones and computers for new employees to providing training through the HAMMER training center.

The Obama administration has pledged that stimulus spending will receive rigorous project oversight and unprecedented public transparency and accountability. Weekly progress reports will be required.

DOE cleanup sites that don't perform up to expectations could receive less money than now allocated and sites that do well could receive more.

But much of the money will be spent on projects that Hanford workers have shown they can do well -- decontaminating and demolishing buildings, digging up buried waste and contaminated soil and treating contaminated ground water.

The goal is to shrink the contaminated area on the 586-square-mile Hanford site to just 75 square miles in the center by 2015. The stimulus money not only will help Hanford meet that goal, but also pay for significant work in the central 75 square miles.

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Sunday, Apr. 12, 2009

Tri-Cities gets chance for extreme makeover

By Annette Cary, Herald staff writer