Marine Corps Logistics Base-Albany bringing storm recovery, green projects, to reality

MCLB-ALBANY — The Jan. 22 tornado that directly hit Marine Corps Logistics Base-Albany has kept officials there busy with the roughly $100 million in repairs that need to be done, but there are other developments to look forward to onboard the installation.

The EF3 tornado that hit southeast Albany cut through the industrial area of MCLB-Albany, which includes the production plant attached to Marine Depot Maintenance Command.

MCLB-Albany Installation and Environment Division Director Fred Broome said the damage estimate has been calculated at $100 million. One of the points of impact was the solar farm for which ground was broken at the base in April 2016 after the Department of the Navy and Georgia Power, a subsidiary of the Southern Company, signed a real estate outgrant to develop the $75 million facility at the base.

The facility has been under construction on a 150-acre corner of the installation visible from South Mock Road and was set to include about 138,000 fixed panels powering up to 5,000 homes on the Georgia Power grid.

The project was a few weeks from coming online when the tornado took out some panels.

“There was a bunch of damage,” Broome said. “East of Johnson Road, (we lost) all of them, and west of Johnson Road we lost 10 percent.”

About 7,200 panels were lost to the storm, and repairs have to be made before the switch is turned on. The solar farm is now expected to go live in July, Broome said.

Another green project on the horizon is the biomass project at Procter & Gamble, which is being brought to life through a contract with Constellation Energy and will supply all the steam for P&G’s paper manufacturing facility and generate an electrical supply at MCLB-Albany.

With this project, the “Net-Zero” energy milestone will be realized for the base.

“This will make us no longer dependent on the grid for power,” Broome said.

The biomass plant comes in addition to other efforts to decrease the installation’s energy footprint, including a project bringing in gas energy to the base originating from a nearby Dougherty County landfill.

The second generator for the landfill gas system has been installed but is not currently running. When both are operational, they will be able to run independently of each other, and the production plant will remain operational even when there is a power outage.

Broome said the biomass system should be coming online within the next year.

Another significant development at MCLB is the relocation of the Georgia National Guard armory from its facility on North Monroe Street to the base. A former maintenance facility at MCLB was renovated for the armory’s needs, but it too sustained damage during the tornado.

“It was a building we moved out of so they could move in,” Broome said. “It was on the western edge of the storm, and it (sustained) some roof damage.”

Gov. Nathan Deal’s supplemental FY 2016 budget included $1.1 million to allow for the relocation. Officials with the city of Albany and Dougherty County soon acted to jointly fund the remaining $400,000 needed to move forward with the project.

Broome said repairs are taking place, and the National Guard is expected to occupy the building this spring.

The base has accomplished $35 million of its storm recovery efforts with the help of Southwest Georgia subcontractors and base personnel working around the clock. This has included debris removal, forestry services and temporary fixes.

Officials are looking toward Headquarters Marine Corps to help secure more money, much of which is going toward roof repairs.

“We expect to have the most critical repairs done by summer,” Broome said. “This time of year, if there is no A/C (air conditioning), it is no big deal. It will be a big issue in May and June.”

The struggle to continue serving the nation’s military after a severe storm is not a struggle unique to MCLB. The Marine Corps Recruit Depot at Parris Island, S.C., is still putting the pieces back together after Hurricane Matthew hit in September, and Naval Air Station Pensacola sustained a substantial impact from Hurricane Ivan in September 2004.

“These things happen,” Broome said. “Thankfully, we have a team that can quickly respond.”

Emergencies are something military installations are constantly preparing for. In the case of the tornado, personnel were volunteering to come in on their own that Sunday afternoon and do what they could to help.

“Some did not get called in, they just showed up,” said Navy Lt. Cmdr. Jason Boatright, the public works officer at MCLB-Albany.

Ski Smigelski, deputy director for the base’s Installation and Environment Division, said four air compressors at the production plant will be changed out to run on landfill gas if needed — further decreasing the dependency on other forms of energy.

Boatright also made note in a recent interview with The Albany Herald of a heating and air conditioning communication system that adjusts the amount of energy needed based on temperature and facility workload. He also discussed an effort to diminish the base’s role as “energy hogs” by resetting infrastructure through the repurposing or demolishing of what is not being properly utilized.

“This is one of the things we are going through right now,” Smigelski said of the infrastructure reset.

Lt. Jose Centenorosado, director of the MCLB-Albany Facilities Engineering and Acquisition Division, added there will soon be an overhaul of MCLB’s gas line system.

“We will have a brand new one very soon,” he said.

Centenorosado said that expansion is continuing on the Cold Borehole Thermal Energy Storage system brought to MCLB in 2015, through which cold water is stored underground during the fall, winter and spring months and harvested each summer to reduce the cost of air conditioning.

The system was introduced at the Marine Corps Logistics Command headquarters building and is being implemented to other structures at the base, an effort that will be ongoing this year, Centenorosado said.

The overall goal, Smigelski said, is to support the warfighter and increase stability. Even with plans in place to move forward with that mission, committing fully to projects is hard without knowing the money will be in hand to follow through.

“All our projects are in support of the warfighter, for the guy on the end in Afghanistan,” he said. “If we don’t have the adequate facilities to work out of, it is not good for the warfighter.”

MCLB-Albany Commanding Officer Col. James Carroll III, summed up ongoing projects at the base: “The ongoing development at Marine Corps Logistics Base-Albany will serve as an anchor for long-term installation viability, ensuring ready facilities, infrastructure and a range of tailored support services that enable our tenant activities to accomplish their assigned missions in support of the warfighter and enhance their quality of life.”

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