May 14, 2007

NWA plans to restore smelter site
Northwest plans to hire about 25 workers locally for maintenance and utility assignments

By ED COX
of the Chronicle

     Northwest Aluminum Company announced Friday that its former smelter plant in The Dalles will be dismantled and razed, and the site restored for sale and redevelopment over the course of the next two years.
     Northwest Aluminum has entered into an agreement with Pro-SE Services, Inc., a California company specializing in engineering and demolition services, that includes the complete dismantling and demolition of the plant structures, removal of process materials and wastes, and preparation of the site for redevelopment.
     According to a press release from the aluminum company, it will hire about 25 local workers to perform certain utility and maintenance services, The property will be offered for redevelopment upon completion of the project sometime in 2009.
     According to a press release from the aluminum company, the site restoration project will have negligible environmental impact, pose no risk to the surrounding community and cause no disruption to neighboring businesses.
     The US Environmental Protection Agency, the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality and the City of The Dalles will perform oversight for various phases of the project, according to the release.
     The Dalles City Manager Nolan Young said the project will have four major impacts for The Dalles. First, he said, it means the end of the aluminum
industry in the direct community, though perhaps not the region, with a re-opening of the Goldendale plant “still an option” and a desirable one.
     Second, he said, there will be some economic benefits to local workers and businesses, such as motels and restaurants serving the forces brought in by the sub-contractors.
     Third, he said, the opening of 94 acres of additional flat, industrial land, now “pretty scarce” in the community, is a boon to economic development.
     And fourth, the removal of the visual “blight” of an abandoned industrial plant improves the aesthetics of the city, he said.
     Although the project be neither short nor easy, Young noted that “the task itself will be economic development, and the end product will be economic development.”