THE GAZETTE-TIMES, ileppner. OR. Thursday, June 10. If7. Page 1
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Desert
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into cosil
fired plant
Peter Klewit Sons' Co. is on schedule in the first phase to
transform the bleak landscape southwest of Boardman into
Portland General Elcctrlc's coal-fired generating plant.
John Kunkel, construction coordinator for the Bechtel
Power Corp. of San Francisco, which will oversee the work
until construction is completed in 1980, said work is
proceeding smoothly on the site preparation and the three
earthfill dams needed for the formation of Carty Reservoir.
Carty Reservoir is a stretch of sagebrush that will
eventually be a 1.500-acre body of water supplied from the
Columbia River.
Peter Kiewit Sons' contract deals with the movement of
over five million cubic yards of earth, rock, coyotes,
sagebrush and jackrabbits during the initial site grading,
access road building and earthfill dam construction.
It is the first of a multitude of contracts to be let in the
construction of the 500-million dollar plant.
Over 300 are working at the site now, Kunkel said, with a
peak force of 800 projected before construction is completed.
Kunkel said PGE anticipates that within 60 days a contract
will be awarded which includes the construction of a railroad
embankment for a spur line to run 13 miles from the Union
Pacific main line to the plant site.
Because the site Is so remote Bechtel supplies the workers
with Rose Ebert, project nurse.
It's 45 minutes to the nearest hospital at Hermiston, so the
medical trailer is well stocked.
When the area around the construction trailers was
gravelled Rose pleaded for them to spare a small patch of
greenery outside her trailer.
They did so since she will be on the job until 1980.
She has worked for Bechtel four years, previously at the
Trojan nuclear plant near Rainier, OR.
Poverty Ridge is also a far cry from the lush, rolling hills of
Pennsylvania, where John Kunkel spent the last several
years working on a generating plant.
A Bechtel employee for 19 years, Kunkel is fascinated by
the variety of desert plant and wildlife and protective of it,
too.
"We discourage anyone from leaving the road to take off
through the 'tundra', he said. "In the spring this stuff is
pretty delicate."
He's keeping an eye out along the excavations for a small
juniper for his yard in Hermiston, but is convinced all the
young trees were burned off In the brushfire, since only older,
heartier junipers remain in the area.
An old well and a knurled juniper tree are all that define
Poverty Ridge. "It looks like poverty," Kunkel smiled, but to
the west huge graders and dozers are carving the
spareseness into a level area for the plant.
Below the ridge in Six-Mile Canyon, the saddle dam, the
divider dike and the west dam are beginning to take shape.
Work on the dams is to form a 1,500-acre cooling reservoir.
The water is overflow or "makeup" water from the Simtag
irrigation farm to the west, transported through a 60-inch
pipe.
The divider dam's function is to separate the makeup
water from warm water that exits in the power plant boiler.
The west dam will be the highest at 120 feet. "It's not as
simple as just pushing up dirt," Kunkel said. There are nine
zones to an earthfill dam, he explained, ranging from the
most impervious at the core to the outside layer of riprap, an
"armor of rock over the compacted dirt" that resists erosion.
The rest of the construction schedule still to be let for bids
calls for the start of steel erection for boiler in the fall of 1976,
the start of erection of boiler pressure parts for the spring of
1978 and the start of erection of the turbine generator the
summer of 1978.
The first hydro test of the plant's boiler will be made in late
1979 or early 1980. The facility is expected to be on line by the
summer of 1980.
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A couple Kiewit rigs turn bleak landscape into energy
producing coal-fire plant.
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