Salem Harbor Power Plant Rebuild | Salem

[stellarfun]

The existing coal /oil plant is being demolished, and new plant, using natural gas as a fuel, constructed.

The video is from Saturday, with extensive drone footage, and is the controlled demolition of boiler 4. From the drone, one can see the single flue stack for the new plant, and the steel framework rising..

https://vimeo.com/155342957

Much of the material and most of the plant equipment is arriving by ship.

If you point this webcam to the north, you can readily see barges or ships docked at the site. There is an oversized barge there this morning, and a cargo ship at anchorage in the harbor.

http://shetlandpark.com/webcam/

 

[deh74]

I was under the impression that the power plant redevelopment was going to be mostly residential, which is obviously not the case. Am I just completely wrong or was it proposed as residential at some point?

 

[Equilibria]

https://vimeo.com/155342957http://shetlandpark.com/webcam/

Thanks for this, Stel. The production on these videos is something else .

 

[TheBostonian]

I was under the impression that the power plant redevelopment was going to be mostly residential, which is obviously not the case. Am I just completely wrong or was it proposed as residential at some point?

Being a Designated Port Area rules out residential.

 

[stellarfun]

I was under the impression that the power plant redevelopment was going to be mostly residential, which is obviously not the case. Am I just completely wrong or was it proposed as residential at some point?

I don't recall exactly how many developable acres the owners of the new plant pick up as a result of demolishing. But at least several dozen. The new plant is basically being built where the coal storage yard and the oil tanks once were. 66 total acres on the site.

They are extending and improving the dock so that cruise ships can readily stop as a port of call during a voyage. I believe they are also deepening the channel, perhaps to 40? feet.

As for the newly developable acres, the early throw-it-against-the-wall ideas ideas was possibly light industrial / commercial. On the north side of the site is a regional sewage treatment plant, which is underground, but there were early complaints about odors from vent stacks, so the sewer district bought and demolished a row of house across the street. The large electric substation is toward the northwest side of the side, and I believe that remains as is. If there were to be residential, I think the only feasible area is on the south and southwest sides of the site.

Also the new plant will be protected against storm surge by am encircling perimeter bulwark, landscaped with a path. I believe that is 10-12 feet high, above the grade elevation of the plant that's being demolished.

^^^ I believe this is looking south from the north side of the site.

^^^^ Looking east / southeast from a public street.

Before. The part demolished on Saturday is near the edge of frame left. The sewage treatment plant starts at bottom left corner. Across the street, you can see the green space where they demolished the houses.

^^^^looking north

The gas pipeline route. I believe they've finished installing the gas pipeline. They may had to place a caisson in the middle of Beverly harbor to create the connection.

They used a machine called a Mantis to take down most of the taller stacks.

http://ahok.webcam/watch/HPmnJ11znOY/mantis-at-salem-power-plant.html

^^^Video of the Mantis here. Hard to see in most of the frames, as it moves around the top of the stack.

 

[BeeLine]

https://flic.kr/p/KW8bhK

 

[stellarfun]

Thanks Beeline, I was looking for this thread.
________________________________________________________
Demolition videos: Rather than explosives, they pulled the various sections of the old plant down.

Last unit to fall: Sept 2
https://vimeo.com/181315528

Previous demolitions

https://vimeo.com/155342957

https://vimeo.com/149439451
^^^ With video of a machine called a Mantis which was used to demolish a tall stack from the top.

_______________________________________________
What's left to be demolished.

“It has taken the better part of 18 months for everything to come down,” Silverstein said. “But when you think about the fact that we brought down 1,100 linear feet of stacks and what looked like one monolithic building but was several large buildings that were fused together... We brought them all down safely, on time and on budget. We’re very happy with how things have played out.”

There’s still demolition to be done, and it won’t be easy.

Steel and concrete footings, which for decades have supported turbines weighing several hundred tons, still remain for the old plant.

“It takes a very big hammer,” Silverstein explained. “In this case, the demo contractor will use a 13,500-pound hydraulic hammer attached to a 172,000-pound hydraulic excavator to break up the concrete.”

http://www.salemnews.com/news/local...cle_3fd7dae1-0848-5e84-971d-7777ae013209.html

The turbines and concrete footings can be seen in a screen grab in the newspaper article.

The new natural gas powered plant comes on line in nine months. There are 45 acres of now-developable land on the site because the new plant has a smaller footprint (no pun).
______________________
Probably because Google is phasing out support of Flash, the address of the following videos on youtube has been altered so these won't be read as a hotlink and produce an error message.

Long pre-demolition slideshow tour
<<<yyytube.com/watch?v=WGHi8PQ1v74>>>

Demolition

<<<yyytube.com/watch?v=io9MchwUBe0>>>

 

[stellarfun]

Aerial view from November, generally looking east. The demolished remains of the old plant can be seen beyond the new plant, close to the water.

SALEM — The horizon is in sight after more than a year of construction at Footprint Power’s billion-dollar Salem Harbor Station, although the work on the property is only truly beginning.

The company is still on target for flipping the switch on the natural gas-fired power plant this summer.

“We’re still doing everything we can to make that happen and still hopeful we’ll be there,” said Scott Silverstein, Footprint’s chief operating officer. “The only question is when you get to the end of the process, what day?”

Silverstein said crews most recently have been putting the finishing touches on exterior
work, such as cladding and windows.

“There’s a lot of steel going up, the cladding going up on the building, so more and more work can go inside,” he said. “A lot of work is going on — a lot of people in there making sure it gets done.”

With the final six months of construction underway, the work site is getting pretty crowded, Silverstein said — “well over 700 during the regular day-shift.”
“At this point, it’s all about connecting piping and pulling wires and making those connections. That’s the bulk of it,” he said.

As the project wraps up, the focus will slowly transition to what comes next: more development, but of a different variety.

As part of the project, the company holds about 43 acres of land, with about 30 acres on the south side of the property and another 12 to 13 to the north.

“Over the course of this year, we’ll be in a position where we can sit down with folks both in City Hall as well as the broader Salem community and talk about what that’s going to look like,” Silverstein said, “and what everybody’s thoughts are on what it could look like going forward.”

http://www.salemnews.com/news/local...cle_f0d9a988-9ab7-587e-84de-e4405968f363.html

 

[Riverworks]

Thanks for the posts. Awesome footage.

So there was never a master "campus" plan created for the facility? Just a "let's build our new power plant first then see what's left over and try to redevelop it in partnership with the city" kind of approach?

Does anyone know if the site had any environmental issues, or if it still needs to be re-mediated?

 

[West]

Thanks for the posts. Awesome footage.

So there was never a master "campus" plan created for the facility? Just a "let's build our new power plant first then see what's left over and try to redevelop it in partnership with the city" kind of approach?

Does anyone know if the site had any environmental issues, or if it still needs to be re-mediated?

It had a coal fired power plant on it for decades, one that pre-dated the founding of the EPA: it cannot possibly NOT have environmental issues. Shifting to a newer, more modern gas plant will in and of itself lower the off-site environmental impacts (pollution, CO2 emissions), so that's a big step in the right direction. It's safe to assume they're being required to do some significant mitigation of the portion of the site where the old plant was, but I do not know how far they're required to take that.

 

[stellarfun]

Riverworks, IIRC, according to reports, the amount of remediation actually needed was less than expected. The projected remediation costs were $50-75 million.

The original Salem Harbor plant was fairly new, built in the 1950s, and expanded in the 1970s. A lot younger than the power plant at the Charlestown Navy Yard which is much older, and can't be remediated because of the extent of the contamination..

 

[West]

A lot younger than the power plant at the Charlestown Navy Yard which is much older, and can't be remediated because of the extent of the contamination..

Stellarfun, I had seen that said of the Charlestown plant and was wondering about the "can't." Does "can't" in this case mean the cost would be so wildly beyond entombing it that it just makes no sense? Or is it that they can't remove the contamination without releasing such a shit-ton of it into the surrounding environment that any cost differential is not the key factor - entombing is the only safe option?

I'm completely open to either being a perfectly good reason to leave it in place, I'm just curious which it is, if you know. And I don't think "entombing" is the right term...but you know what I mean.

 

[JeffDowntown]

Stellarfun, I had seen that said of the Charlestown plant and was wondering about the "can't." Does "can't" in this case mean the cost would be so wildly beyond entombing it that it just makes no sense? Or is it that they can't remove the contamination without releasing such a shit-ton of it into the surrounding environment that any cost differential is not the key factor - entombing is the only safe option?

I'm completely open to either being a perfectly good reason to leave it in place, I'm just curious which it is, if you know. And I don't think "entombing" is the right term...but you know what I mean.

My understanding is that the "can't" is almost always a question of cost benefit.

There is virtually no contamination that cannot be cleaned up safely, given unlimited resources and funding. Even a mess like Chernobyl could be remediated, but it is never going to happen because it is just hugely costly and dangerous (to the workers not folks outside). So it gets entombed onsite instead.

And I am not saying the Charlestown plant is anything at all in the league of Chernobyl. But somebody has to really want to land to pay the cost of remediation (think Wynn in Everett!).

 

[stellarfun]

West, I do not know. They have been able to re-purpose the chain forge shop (which had significant contamination) and the ropewalk, so they will go to some length to re-purpose these old industrial buildings.

My guess with respect to the power plant is that it was in use for nearly 70 years, until 1972. (No attempt to abate pollution from the plant as this pre-dated major environmental legislation.) And during that period, heavy metals (from the burning of coal) seeped into the brickwork. And if that's the case, then it becomes economically infeasible to try and salvage the building.

_______________________________________

There is a former government-owned, steam heating plant (which hasn't burnt coal in 40 years) in Washington DC and, a year or two ago, environmental consultants took ambient readings of volatized mercury in the air that exceeded the measurement capabilities of their instruments, and obviously, the levels they did measure were far above what would be allowed for a habitable building.

 

[West]

My understanding is that the "can't" is almost always a question of cost benefit.

There is virtually no contamination that cannot be cleaned up safely, given unlimited resources and funding. Even a mess like Chernobyl could be remediated, but it is never going to happen because it is just hugely costly and dangerous (to the workers not folks outside). So it gets entombed onsite instead.

And I am not saying the Charlestown plant is anything at all in the league of Chernobyl. But somebody has to really want to land to pay the cost of remediation (think Wynn in Everett!).

I understand that conceptually, but now that you've mentioned nuclear disaster sites... I grew up near Three Mile Island and was in the area when their accident occurred. And so understandably followed the ensuing mess. Us locals of course all wanted it all hauled away, or at least that was the natural first impulse. But I pretty clearly recall the engineers eventually saying something along the lines of "entombing this instead of removing it is NOT a cost comparison issue - it is a baseline safety issue". The argument being that the toxic mixture of liquids and gasses in the chamber were so crazy nasty and so difficult to accurately identify that any attempt to remove them would entail vastly greater risk than entombing - and that's assuming they had unlimited money for either option (which they of course did not). Sealing that sucker up was really the only option for the sake of minimizing risk to us locals, not just for the sake of the budget. (And of course there was some serious suspicion that this was just a budget-driven dodge...)

TMI's an extreme case, and it did not have the roof blown off a la Chernobyl, so the latter might be a totally different case given how that one played out.

So I'm curious if there are less extreme situations at old power plants and other severely contaminated locations where the experts opt for entombment for purely non-budget reasons, just sort of "we have to leave this alone for a century or two so the chemicals can stabilize down into something less crazy, and THEN we can have a go at removing it."

 

[West]

Stellarfun, thanks for the reply, I had posted mine to JeffDowntown before seeing yours.

And having read through it, the concept of heavy metals getting infused into the brickwork itself strikes me as a really fundamental issue of "if" it can possibly be remediated, not just a "can we afford that" issue. I mean, how the hell do you extract heavy metals from a brick structure at all?

Come to think of it, if that were the worst thing, wouldn't the just seal it in? Problems with that, I realize, brick is supposed to breathe, can't do that if you seal it.

 

[stellarfun]

west, in the case of the former steam heating plant, the construction was highly atypical. The external brick walls are free-standing, with no lateral support. The walls are comprised of typical brick on the outside, and a ceramic, glazed brick on the inside (almost a tile). The two sides encase a set of cavities from floor to rood , in which there is steel gust bracing to keep the walls from collapsing in the wind. Further, the plant was designed without a stack to carry away the gases and combustion by-products from the burning of Appalachian coal, which has the highest mercury content of any type of coal.

My speculative guess is that the mercury infiltrated these cavities, and in the summer, the interior temperature is high enough for the mercury to vaporize. Several of the highest readings of mercury were at the top of the plant, which makes me feel that the source is not solely mercury contamination of the concrete floor.

In any event, the latest proposal is to demolish three sides of the heating plant, and then reconstruct them..

 

[Arlington]

So I'm curious if there are less extreme situations at old power plants and other severely contaminated locations where the experts opt for entombment for purely non-budget reasons, just sort of "we have to leave this alone for a century or two so the chemicals can stabilize down into something less crazy, and THEN we can have a go at removing it."

Is entombment the same as putting ~10' of dirt cap on top (as was done for the Costco/HD/Target shopping)?

Frankly, these coastal locations need to have their elevation boosted as protection against sea level rise. Capping a harborside site and raising its elevation 10' seems like a win-win.

Put another way, they'd be crazy to clean up these harborside brownfield sites only to leave them back at the same flood-prone elevation. Wynn is raising his elevation, what, 3 feet? He'd probably have gone higher except that he judged he was going to be digging a big parking/service pit anyway, and so was solving his problem through removal rather than capping.

People with less money than Wynn (ie everyone) seems way better off just capping these sites with fill, and lots of it, and call it both entombment and a bulwark against sea level rise.

Also the new plant will be protected against storm surge by am encircling perimeter bulwark, landscaped with a path. I believe that is 10-12 feet high, above the grade elevation of the plant that's being demolished.

^^^ I believe this is looking south from the north side of the site.

 

[West]

west, in the case of the former steam heating plant, the construction was highly atypical. ..

The way you describe it is sure as hell like no other building I've ever seen or read of. Highly atypical indeed.

 

[stellarfun]

The way you describe it is sure as hell like no other building I've ever seen or read of. Highly atypical indeed.

That's what the structural engineers have said as well.

North and west facades. The west facade has lateral support, as there were offices and other rooms on this side. The other three sides are basically an eggshell.

I think of it as a poor man's version of this:

^^^ This is the still-operating Central Heating Plant, built 15 years prior. The original design for the Central Heating Plant had several smokestacks, but Congress objected, as the stacks would interfere with the view of Arlington Cemetery. So the stacks came off. The penthouse housing and hiding pollution control equipment was not in the original.

The Central Heating Plant was designed by the great Paul Philippe Cret, whose reputation has suffered as his work came to be admired and copied by architects of the Reich. Jane Holtz Kay, in her book "Lost Boston", credits Cret for the curved facade and ornamental eagle of the now-demolished Federal Reserve building in Boston. Kay states that the building was built in 1953, which was eight years after Cret's death, and he had largely stopped practicing because of failing health by 1940 or so. So if the original Fed Boston is his design, it is a pre-war design.

The architect for the West Heating Plant also designed the Main State Department building (Truman building).