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CUU own 25% Schaft Creek: proven/probable min. reserves/940.8m tonnes = 0.27% copper, 0.19 g/t gold, 0.018% moly and 1.72 g/t silver containing: 5.6b lbs copper, 5.8m ounces gold, 363.5m lbs moly and 51.7m ounces silver; (Recoverable CuEq 0.46%)
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Power line stringing underway
By Josh Massey - Terrace Standard
Published: November 05, 2013 7:00 AM
Updated: November 05, 2013 7:12 AM
Published: November 05, 2013 7:00 AM
Updated: November 05, 2013 7:12 AM
MOTORISTS ON Hwy16 west of Terrace last week were witness to a helicopter high wire act as power lines were strung from pole to pole on BC Hydro’s Northwest Transmission Line which has entered a new construction phase.
With traffic stopped, drivers had time to watch as a helicopter strung lines across the Skeena River, connecting high towers that had been installed earlier in the year.
Valard, BC Hydro’s general contractor hired to construct the 344km long transmission line running north of BC Hydro’s Skeena Substation to Bob Quinn on Hwy37 North, employed Blackcomb Aviation from southern BC to do the stringing.
Using a short-bodied helicopter with a powerful engine, a Blackcomb pilot pulled rope and cable through the air while Valard workers positioned on top of the towers helped guide them into a pulley system. The helicopter performed several passes, hovering in one place for up to 10 minutes as the cable was secured.
“They pull, sag, mark, clip,” said BC Hydro official Anthony Mullin who was overseeing the work, about the meticulous and delicate process.
A rope line is installed first, then the next operation is to pull a hard line into place using the rope line. Then they pull two aluminium conductors with steel cores into place. Then they sag the lines and install spacers and dampers.
BC Hydro has said construction is on pace to have the line functioning next spring however there are still several hundred of 1,100 towers to be erected and more than 50 per cent of line to be strung.
A majority of the towers have been or will be lifted into place using a heavy-lift helicopter belonging to Erickson Air-Crane, a company specializing in heavy-lift operations.
Approximately 600 structures have been flown in to date with about another 250 to be installed this year.
Valard, which is based in Edmonton, has 448 people employed on the $746 million project, 345 of whom are local with 165 of the total workforce being aboriginal. There are another approximately 50 workers working for companies subcontracted to Valard, housed at various points along the transmission line route with one camp located at Kitsumkalum just west of Terrace and another in the Nass Valley.
The overall cost of the project, the largest ever to be undertaken by a public sector body in the northwest, has been rising steadily since it was first announced in 2009.
The cost then was listed at $395 million and has risen annually since then to the current $746 million (which includes a $10 million contingency amount).
Officials said blasting and road construction to provide access to the route contributed to an increase in costs.
And not included in earlier cost figures was the more than $100 million in contracts signed with First Nations along the transmission route and the Nisga’a Nation for right of way clearing and associated work.
Once complete, the project will link hydro projects north of Terrace with mine sites and the grid to the south.
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