Tim Hicks - Managing Editor

Chuck Munns, at right, the SRNS president, talks with job hunters Latasha Badger, left, and Keyata Priester, foreground.

Tim Hicks - Managing Editor

Lines formed early to get inside the SRS job fair.

Tim Hicks - Managing Editor

Kristin Bodkin, at left, with Career Personnel, talks to a job seeker during the job fair.

Tim Hicks - Managing Editor

Because of the heat and the wait, people waited in the BPS auditorium. Groups of 30 to 50 were let into the job fair.

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The line weaved out of the Barnwell Primary School cafeteria along the sidewalk to the front of the school and then beside the semicircular driveway to the street.

Several hundred feet of sidewalk - crowded with several hundred people.

These were people seeking jobs through the more than $1.6 billion federal stimulus package that is coming through the Savannah River Site and the U.S. Department of Energy.

The package will create or retain about 3,000 temporary jobs at SRS overall. The jobs will be to clean up areas at SRS as part its environmental management mission.

"I'm proud to say we are some of the first to use the stimulus," said Chuck Munns.

Munns is the president and chief executive officer of Savannah River Nuclear Solutions, the conglomerate whose main partners include Northrop Grumman, Fluor Daniel and Honeywell. SRNS has the DOE contract for the management and operation of SRS.

"We will be the ones actually doing the hiring," Munns said during a town hall meeting before the June 17 job fair opened.

The town hall meeting was to answer questions from the public about the stimulus project.

Munns said about 500 people have already been hired and that SRNS has been hiring between 75 to 100 people a weekly.

The jobs are all temporary, lasting between one to two years as environmental cleanup projects are completed.

"We will break this up into many small projects. We will use small contractors or individuals. You can connect with us as individuals or small companies to augment us," Munns said.

The crowd of job seekers outside the school became so large by 1 p.m. that SRNS people were passing out water and redirecting people to the auditorium to wait. Job seekers were let into the school cafeteria - where the job fair was set up - 30 to 50 people at a time.

Latasha Badger of Allendale and Keyata Priester of Barnwell both lost their jobs.

Badger was laid off about six months ago from a restaurant, she said.

Priester has been without a regular job for about two years, having been laid off from a convenience store. Babysitting and cleaning have been odd jobs Priester has done since then, she said.

Both women said they have been getting some vocational training through the Workforce Investment Act.

Roy Cutler of Augusta was another person at the job fair.

Cutler started working for CSX railroad early last year, but has been on furlough recently.

In the meantime, Cutler has been working temporary jobs. One job involved building bleachers for the Masters golf tournament, he said.

At 48, Cutler has one son and a wife, who is working, he said.

"She's the main breadwinner," Cutler said.

"If we have the opportunity, it will help us," he said of the job fair.

Inside the job fair, about a dozen job placement agencies and vendors accepted resumés from people.

Jeanine Portee of Augusta came to the job fair hoping for a full-time job. Portee, in her 30s, is working part-time while studying for a degree in organic chemistry at Augusta State University. Portee will graduate in another year, she said.

At 64, Christopher Moore wonders if he might be hired.

Moore, of Sleytown, said he needs a job because his Social Security check is not enough to pay the bills. Because he is on Social Security, Moore can't draw unemployment. Occasionally he does small handiwork jobs, he said.

"I'm just one man who wants to live better than Social Security. You can't live off it," he said. "I'm able to work. That's the first thing they ask you at the unemployment office: ‘Are you able to work?' I can still work."

Moore worked construction and drove commercial trucks, including a period as an independent trucker, he said.

However, it was hard competition as an independent driver, he said.

Now Moore just wants a job.

"I don't even make enough to file income tax," he said.

Overall, the stimulus-induced jobs are to reduce the "environmental management footprint" at SRS by 40 percent, which equates to about 79,000 acres, according to DOE data.

The project will hasten the clean-up of areas at SRS originally used for nuclear weapons production, including decommissioning two reactors, disposing of 16,000 drums of transuranic waste and disposing of or shipping out of 4,500 cubic meters of other transuranic waste.

Clean-up will end in September 2011, said Jeffrey Allison, the DOE manager at SRS. Allison spoke at the town hall meeting along with Munns.

The impact to the area of creating thousands of temporary jobs is not lost on Allison.

"It's a pretty dogged task," he said. "To me, it's an incredible thing."

DOE and SRNS officials have both said that the permanent hiring of some temporary workers might occur as current SRS employees retire or leave.

Either way, the project will be an opportunity to educate people on nuclear energy, said Munns.

"It will get another couple of thousands of people into the culture of nuclear energy and the understanding of nuclear energy," he said.

Danny Black, the president and CEO of SouthernCarolina Alliance, the regional economic development agency for Allendale, Hampton, Barnwell and Bamberg counties, attended the job fair.

"Obviously this is a super turnout. The chief goal of today is getting a person's information into the system," he said.

"Our intention is to get 500 of these jobs to the people of our region. As you can see, we have a lot of qualified people," Black said.

"My only regret is that working with the government is it's a slow, cumbersome process and takes time," he said.

However, Black welcomes the SRS Recovery Act project.

"It came at a good time with the plant closures we had and the economic conditions," Black said.

"It (the project) ought to take our numbers down to the state average," he said of the unemployment percentages in the region.

According to the latest unemployment figures from the S.C. Employment Security Commission, in May, the state percentage was at 12.1 percent. In both Barnwell and Bamberg counties, the unemployment rate was 17.2 percent; in Allendale County, 22.1 percent and in Hampton County, 16.6 percent.

The national unemployment average was 9.4 percent in May.

DOE and SRNS will hold another job fair in Allendale June 24 at the USC-Salkehatchie conference center, 213 Academy St. from 1 to 3 p.m.

There will be a town hall meeting beforehand at noon.

Job seekers can file online and get more information at www.srs.gov/recovery.