by David Flint
Sometime in the next few weeks a parade of heavy trucks carrying parts for giant wind turbines will start moving into Stephentown. The turbines are ultimately headed for Brodie Mountain in neighboring Hancock, MA, but pending moving them up the mountain for installation, the parts, including towers, blades, nacelles and hubs will be parked in Neil Gardner’s field. Gardner in the last two weeks has cleared four or five acres and created a giant parking lot with an access road off of Route 43.
With trucks up to 130 feet long coming up Route 22 from the south and construction of a new bridge over the Kinderhook ongoing, there was no way they could pass on the temporary detour bridge. So the trucks will come up Pease Road to Route 43 and back down Route 43 to what is called the “lay down yard” at Gardner’s field. That route requires the repair of the Pease Road bridge over the Kinderhook that has been closed down for 15 years.
Some people noticing the recent activity concluded that maybe the bridge is being reopened. Well, it is, but only for this project. Patrick Whiteley is in charge of a crew from Reed & Reed, Inc. that was busy this week constructing the temporary bridge that will accommodate the trucks. They have laid down a concrete slab on the bridge as a base. Whiteley said that when all the turbine parts have been brought in, the slab will remain but the bridge will again be closed off as the Town does not wish to reopen the bridge for public traffic.
Reed & Reed is an 81-year old construction company from Woolwich, ME, formerly known for bridge building but now becoming a leading wind power contractor in the Northeast. They have been selected by the Berkshire Wind Power Cooperative Corporation as prime contractor for the 15-megawatt windmill installation on Brodie Mountain. The project comprises ten General Electric wind turbines that Whiteley said will be similar in type and size to the Zephyr turbine that was installed on Jiminy Peak two years ago. The Zephyr has three 120-foot long turbine blades atop a 260-foot tower.
Whitely said Gardner’s lay down yard is arranged to make it easy to unload the turbine parts and then reload them for transportation to Brodie Mountain.
Up on the mountain, he said, the first slab has been laid and foundation work will follow. One by one as the foundations are constructed, the towers and turbine parts will be slowly moved up the mountain and put into place with giant cranes, one of them weighing 440 tons.
He expected that if everything goes all right, the ten turbines could all be completely installed by the end of the year. Reed & Reed, he said, has become very proficient at this. They recently put up 38 towers at Stetson Mountain in Maine in a period of eleven weeks. At Kibby Mountain, also in Maine, they installed 22 towers this year and are planning another 22 this year.
Whiteley will be in charge of the unloading and reloading and moving stuff around. “One of the keys to this job is definitely logistics, getting stuff around without hurting anyone. Safety is number one,” he said.