Big move in Port Colborne shuts down power
You don’t see this on the street often — a nearly 31-metre-tall scrubber tower.
Moved down Elm Street in Port Colborne to the Welland Canal for shipment, it required that employees of Canadian Niagara Power, Bell Canada, Ground Aerial Maintenance Services (GAMS) and private contractors work for hours taking down and putting up power, fibre optic cable and phone lines along the journey.
The tower move, in two sections, started at Thurston Machine’s Invertose Drive plant and ended up along the Welland Canal beside the Ceres (formerly Robin Hood) plant.
“It’s going to (ArcelorMittal) Dofasco steel mill in Hamilton. The scrubber is used to clean the air that comes out of the blast furnace before it’s exhausted into the atmosphere,” said Thurston’s general manager, Bryan Creighton.
Creighton said it took about eight months to build the tower, and that it will be going to replace a tower the company built 16 years ago.
“It needed to be replaced.”
The tower was built at the company’s Invertose Drive facility because of its sandblasting capabilities and larger floor space, said Creighton. The company also has a newer plant on Elm Street and Barrick Road.
“We did have to tear the back wall out of the building,” he said.
Saturday morning, as crews took down the various lines to allow for the move, two transport trucks from Welland’s Pioneer Heavy Haul Inc. waited at the back of the plant.
The move took nearly four hours from start to finish, and power was shut down to the area.
Though the power outage was only to last four hours, during the move Canadian Niagara Power sent out a tweet saying due to circumstances beyond its control, the outage could last up to six hours.
Mel Jones, of Pioneer Heavy Haul Inc., said the two trucks would be loaded onto a barge and once at Dofasco driven straight into the plant.
Creighton said the company was hoping for a good weather report so the barge could move down the canal and across Lake Ontario.