The exhaust spewing from the gas turbine generator rattles the tin walls of a nearby tool shed and masks the sound of the clanking wrenches and tools being rifled through inside.

            “Are these yours or are they ours,” shouts Maj. Erik Stor to the contractor and two blue jumpsuit-clad Iraqi engineers as he picks up two volt meters inside the shed.  “We need to figure out what goes and what stays.”

            With Iraqi engineers in tow, Stor, the operations officer for the Army Corps of Engineers Restore Iraqi Electricity Directorate, spearheads the effort to transfer the site back to the Iraq Ministry of Electricity.

             After spending more than $24 million over the past year bringing the new 23-Megawatt generator to life, the time has come to count spare parts, place filters in storage and officially transfer the sprawling site back to Ministry control. 

            “We have to make sure we are leaving them the equipment they need to be successful,” Stor said.  “We have worked together building this site, and we need to make sure that work wasn’t in vain.

            “The worst thing we could do is to walk away without making sure they have the tools and training necessary to keep this place running for decades to come,” he said.

            The station is one of the first to be transferred back to the Interim Iraqi Government, a step that signifies mission completion in the sea of reconstruction efforts now underway.

            “This is a great step for the people of Iraq , but we need more training and more time,” said the plant’s manager.  “We are very thankful for the work here; we just want more time with the people here to help us.”

            In a country where few were allowed to act independently and make decisions on operations and maintenance, training has been an on-going issue for the electricity reconstruction effort.  More than 40 hours of classroom instruction and side-by-side operation in the plant is part of the process to bring Iraqi operators to a better understanding of the controls and equipment brought in to bring more electricity to the country.

            Computer controls, scheduled outages for maintenance and safety systems were all new to the employees who had not seen new electricity generators for more than a decade.

            “Our job here isn’t just to bring Iraq more electricity, it is to help the Iraqi people create a fair and equitable system that will last for years to come,” Stor said.  “It’s about new and rehabilitated generators, spare parts, training; it’s about giving them a solid foundation to build from after we leave.”

            Five other electricity generation stations across the country are in the process of being transferred back to the Ministry of Electricity, while work continues on finishing the Corp’s initial projects list with a price tag of more than $1 billion.

            It’s the final step for the projects that began more than a year ago and have served as the daily fuel for Stor and the team of Iraqi and international contractors working to rebuild the nation.

            “We found a dilapidated infrastructure when we arrived,” said Lt. Col. Jeffrey Ogden, the Corps’ top electricity reconstruction official in Baghdad .  “Thanks to the hard work of the Iraqi contractors and laborers and our Corps team, we are leaving behind a system that is much better than what we found.”

            Since arriving in Iraq last fall, the Corps has built more than 1,200 towers, repaired 8,600 kilometers of transmission line and rehabilitated or built enough generators to bring an additional 1,621 Megawatts to the national grid.

            It’s an effort that has employed more than 10,000 Iraqis and pumped more than $500,000 in the local economy

Editor’s Note: Photos are available.  Requests should be directed to Mitch Frazier at (540) 665-5339 or via cell at 0-790-192-5105 (Iraqna). Email requests can also be made to mitchell.frazier@tac01.usace.army.mil.  For more information on the Corps in Iraq , visit www.grd.usace.army.mil.