MORTON — Close to 100 people, primarily residing in East Lewis County, will be back to work this month when Hampton Affiliates reopens its Morton stud mill on Monday.

    The sawmill will start up next week; the planer mill will remained closed until Oct. 19, according to Steve Zika, Hampton’s chief executive officer.

    The mill has been closed since last December, when severe winter storms collapsed a warehouse roof and rendered the mill inoperable.

    Repairs and rebuilding are nearly complete, Zika reported earlier this week. But the Morton mill will not return to its original level of productivity.

    Due to low consumer demand, depressed lumber prices, and constricted log supply from one of the company’s major vendors, the mill will start back up under reduced capacity, Zika said.

    A report released this summer stated the mill would be returning at just 50 percent of normal capacity. Figures provided this week from plant manager Tim Johnson puts the number just slightly higher, at around 60 percent.

    Before closing, the mill was employing close to 165 people.

    The re-open has gotten a late start. Reports this summer had predicted that the Morton sawmill would start up again in September.

    But Zika stated the company has tried to be fair to its employees during the closure and the delay in reopening.

    “While we are excited to have the rebuild construction almost complete in a safe and cost-effective manner,” he said, “we regret the stress this downtime has put on our employees and the community.”

    The company has continued to provide health care benefits to all Morton employees during the closure period.

    And since the plant will be starting up in “reduced production mode,” as Zika explained it, the company has also paid 60 days of wages to all former, eligible Morton employees not offered re-employment.

    Those left unemployed have few choices for work in the Morton area. Tubafor, the TMI Forest Products sawmill in Morton just across the street from Hampton, cut back on its production hours this summer as well.

    Tubafor and Hampton, along with Morton General Hospital, constitute Morton’s three largest employers.

    Hampton’s other Lewis County stud mill, located in Randle, will return to normal operating hours this month. The mill had increased production hours to accommodate customers during Morton’s closure, Zika said.

    “We remain optimistic that modest signs of improvement in the economy will continue and housing markets will start to rally beginning in 2010,” he said. “But in the short-term, we will continue to operate in a curtailed mode at all of our sawmill facilities.”

    Dian McClurg is a former Chronicle reporter and current freelance writer living near Silver Creek. She can be reached at dlmcclurg@tds.net.