MARINE CORPS AIR STATION IWAKUNI, Japan -- Moving a mountain may seem like an impossibility, but in order to build a new 8,000 foot runway, a collective of Japanese and American personnel are moving approximately half of Mount Atago to the station. The move is part of the MCAS Iwakuni Runway Relocation Project, which entails bringing dirt from the mountain to dump in the sea, expanding the base. The project is in its final stages of completion and is scheduled to be finished in 2009. The relocation project will provide a new runway to stop aircraft from taking a hard right after take-off, sending noise to downtown Iwakuni. It is one of the largest projects in the Department of Defense and the largest in Japan. To bring all the crushed rock here, the mountain is first drilled and blasted twice a day. Then dump trucks, capable of holding 46 tons of dirt make approximately 450 trips back and forth through the day to three large rock crushers, according to Mark Nedzbala, station engineer with the Army Corps of Engineers and native of Columbia, Md. “The crushers take the material down in size to about roughly 12 inches,” explained Nedzbala. The crushers run six days a week and send the rubble over two miles aboard conveyors, which lead to the sea. If the crusher ever needs repair there is a one-day stock pile of dirt set aside to continue work, said Nedzbala. Once the dirt meets the ocean, it is put on large barges for the approximately two-mile transport to the station, completing the almost five-mile trip. “Well, the project is well along the way. It started in 1997, with its completion scheduled for 2009. We are getting close to that point,” said Nedzbala.