When Fort Irwin Garrison Commander Col. Jim Chevallier addressed the Barstow Area Chamber of Commerce's annual State of the County, State of the City, State of Fort Irwin and MCLB luncheon on Sept. 23, 2009, he said he doesn't expect anything to change in the near future.
"If I could sum it up, the state of affairs at Fort Irwin for us is business as usual. We've been at war basically since 9/11," Col. Chevallier told the crowd of about 50 business and government leaders gathered at the Hampton Inn and Suites in Lenwood. "Next year we don't anticipate any change whatsoever in our mission and the pace at which we do it, so that's the state of Fort Irwin as I understand it today."
As the garrison commander at Fort Irwin, Col. Chevallier described his role "as a cross between a mayor and a city manager."
The role of Fort Irwin is "training the force," and that entails having 10 brigade combat teams conduct training in the High Desert each year, he said.
"It is absolutely critical to national defense particularly at this time because all the units that are coming to Fort Irwin are conducting a Mission Rehearsal Exercise and their next step is deployment to either Iraq or Afghanistan," he said.
Fort Irwin also has some units, which deploy routinely to either Iraq or Afghanistan, he said, noting that the 2nd HET deployed on Tuesday en route to Kuwait for further movement into Iraq.
"We will always somewhere around 250 or 300 Soldiers that live at Fort Irwin that are deployed forward in support of Global War on Terror," he said.
The installation also takes care of Soldiers, Families and civilian employees, he added.
"All those words, three things: We train the force, we deploy forces and we take care of Soldiers and Families," he said. "That's what we do at the National Training Center."
The installation now covers about 750,000 acres and during training rotations, its population reaches around 22,000 with 5-6,000 rotational Soldiers, about 4,600 permanent-station Soldiers, 6,000 civilian employees and about 7,000 Family members, he said.
Of those Family members, about 2,000 to 2,300 of those live somewhere else other than Fort Irwin, he said.
Most of the children at Fort Irwin are in Silver Valley Unified School District and comprise about 65 percent of that district's population, he said.
"One of our significant concerns right now is the state of the budget in support of schools in California," he said. "Our military members are ordered here. They don't have a choice and we are not looking forward to what we anticipate is another round of cuts to the school district for the next academic year."
One of the major initiatives at Fort Irwin is the 500 MW Solar Enhanced Use Lease, which is for up to 500 megawatts, he said, as he explained what an enhanced use lease is.
"An enhanced use lease what that really translates into is what we've done is gone out with a proposal to industry that says we have a lot of land. Developer we want you to utilize our land. You spend all your dollars," he said. "Build renewable energy plants. You sell that renewable energy into the grid and in return the Army gets 'in-kind consideration,' which is yet to be negotiated and yet to be defined."
A developer has already been selected for the project, and Col. Chevallier said he anticipates an agreement being signed on Oct. 15, which will begin the permitting process that could take two years.
"It will actually be the largest renewable energy effort within the Department of Defense worldwide, so it's something we probably plant in the ground as being the DoD lead in energy," he said.
Travelers coming to Fort Irwin will notice the opening of the truck bypass in the next three weeks, which will divert trucks off the road into Fort Irwin and should improve traffic safety, he said.
"It is one more attempt to make that road as safe as it can possibly be," he said. "That's one of hazards we still have despite all the improvements that have happened to that road over a number of years is the trucks can only maintain a certain speed and it creates unsafe passing."
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