The Man Behind the Steam

After graduating from the California Maritime Academy, George Hall went to sea and worked his way up to become a licensed Chief Engineer on merchant ships. In 1975, he came ashore to work as Maintenance Supervisor at Crown Zellerbach’s steam plant in West Linn.

In those 70’s heydays, the mill employed about 1100 people with the wood mill still grinding out pulp, eight paper machines running and all three boilers online. It was a major operation and George became intimately familiar with the entire system. “I got to know every pipe and valve in the place,” he says with a grin.

After a strike in 1978, he became the Steam and Utility Superintendent. This position was not only responsible for the steam plant but also the fresh water, effluent, and fire systems as well as the paper machine drive turbines, drying and condensate systems. He also supervised the mill’s compressed air supply, heating for the office and West Linn hotel; hog fuel (waste wood) storage and handling, pressure vessel and safety valve inspections, and steam department accounting.

In addition, he oversaw 40 employees: 22 in the steam plant, four turbine operators, four water and clarifier operators, six millwrights, two fire system millwrights, and two supervisors. Calling this position a big and demanding job would be an understatement!

Although the mill no longer burns hog fuel and millwrights come from other departments, current steam plant operations require only two people: a boiler operator and a roving utility person!

George described his biggest challenges of running the plant. “The first was being on-call 24/7… also the availability of mechanical support in off hours to respond to breakdowns. Another challenge was scheduling operators and handling short notice absentees.” This was in addition to the daily trials of keeping the paper machines supplied with enough steam and the maintaining the vast, convoluted maze of old systems that supported the mill.

As a manager, George was required to work employee positions during the two strikes of his career, both of which lasted almost a year. “I had to cover every job in the steam plant. Mostly boiler operator during the first strike and millwright in the second one.” This was in addition to his regular duties as superintendent.

George said even though he worked seven day a week during the strike, “I actually loved it because I got to do all these jobs I couldn’t normally do. I turned a lot of wrenches and even learned to run the dozer on the hog fuel pile.”

At that time, the boilers were primarily fired with hog fuel. Although they could burn natural gas, hog fuel produced by the sawmill or trucked in from other mills, was much cheaper. Gas supplies were often curtailed in the winter, so the boilers could also burn heavy #6 bunker oil from large storage tanks.

The mill’s steam demand for eight paper machines required all three boilers, all the time – they were never shut down except for annual maintenance.

“We planned our outages around paper machine outages,” George explained, “We needed twelve hours to build steam from a cold start, using diesel-soaked rags to get the fires started in each boiler’s Dutch oven.”

For years, sludge from paper making was dewatered, then added to the hog fuel and burned. George said, “This really impacted our ability to fire the boilers efficiently due to the high moisture and clay content. It was like dumping a pile of mud on a campfire!”

To address this inefficient practice, he designed a sludge press that was used in conjunction with the circular clarifier up on the hill. Sludge was no longer burned, which resulted in a “dramatic cost savings in the amount of hog fuel that we burned.” Thanks to him, the processed sludge is now hauled away for agricultural purposes.

George eventually left the mill to start his own automotive repair business. He then moved to central California as an operations manager a biomass plant and later managed two large power plants in southern California. His final career position was with GE Power as a senior professional engineer and consultant in power plant operation.

While he’s happily retired now, George still keeps his hands on an old steam plant. Volunteering as Chief Engineer aboard the Oregon Maritime Museum’s Steamer Portland, George’s extensive background and experience is much appreciated in helping run the 1947-built paddle wheeler. He even gets to turn wrenches and get his clothes dirty!