Unalaska, AK – Community members, engineers, and construction workers gathered Wednesday for the powerhouse ground breaking ceremony. Using gold painted shovels, city representatives and others dug into loose gravel at the site of the new building for a ceremonial beginning to a project that took almost 10 years of planning.

"It's important because it signifies that we actually have all the players in place," said Jim Dokoozian, the CEO of SKW Construction, the project contractors. "We have the contractor, the engineering team, the reviewers, the city, the city council, all united and going forward with this. Everything's been signed now the job is for us to go forward and get it done."

The steel building is currently in the design stage and will be built to withstand 175 mph winds then shipped here in parts. The base of the building will be highly reinforced concrete that can hold up the 95 ton generators. The first stage of building will start in early April with building the base. Dokoozian said they will be hiring highly-skilled workers locally.

"We like to hire good, qualified, skilled people. We're going to come up with a list and we'll post that here and make it noticeable to everybody. The more people we can hire in Unalaska/Dutch Harbor, the better."

Mayor Shirley Marquardt spoke at the event, praising the hard work that city staff and others put into the decade long project. She said the city is now modernizing the powerhouse and moving beyond World War II era technology. The new generators be 30 percent more efficient when burning diesel and will allow the city to use alternative power sources as well.

"Propane, geothermal, different biofuels you know, we can switch to those as well," she said. "It's flexible, the technology is new and it's the best that they've got in Europe where they take this very, very seriously."

The firm deadline for project completion is June 22, 2010.