In the 1930’s, the system of channels of sending the great lakes no longer met the economic needs of Canada and the country was eager to expand. The shipment was affected by canals 21 feet deep that caused the load to be downloaded to ocean vessels in ports like Montreal. But any solution had to be mutually acceptable to the United States, which shared the jurisdiction of the lakes and its exit to the Atlantic, the Sant Llorenç river.
A binational treaty for combined navigation improvements and the construction of hydroelectric did not get enough votes in the United States Senate in 1934. At the signing of the Failed Voting Treaty, President Herbert Hoover, a former mining engineer, predicted that it would be “the greatest internal improvement in the North -American continent.” Another push in 1941, supported by President Franklin Roosevelt and Prime Minister Mackenzie King, also failed in the Senate, stopped by opposition from the ports of the Atlantic and Gulf coast, railways and oil and coal industries. The ports and railways were worried that they would lose business, while the interests of fossil fuel feared that they would be subjected to a cheaper hydroelectric.
Finally, Canada threatened to proceed unilaterally. This president promoted President Dwight Eisenhower to pressure Congress to support a new plan, a slogan for a year that finally succeeded in 1954. At that time design work had long been done. The Plan called for the shipping channels that linked the four largest western lakes and a complex re-re-plomeria of a section of 35 kilometers in length and quickly of the Sant Llorenç river on the New York-Canada border, which has just climbed Montreal.
The program began with the construction of two cofferdams to close the site for the electric power station on Barnhart Island. The job was interested in intense interest, with 40 bid companies and Mannix-Raymond Ltd., based in Montreal. One of the sockets was a 500 -foot rock and land prey through the northern channel of the Sant Llorenç, from Sheek Island, next to the Canadian side to the island of Barnhart, next to the United States. Two kilometers of the river, after the elimination of dense and glacial boulder until a much larger structure was specified: a 4,500 -foot cofferdam in 60 circular sheet cells, which extends from the Continental Ontario to the island of Barnhart.
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Immediately after the end of the cofferdams and the riverbed, two contractors began excavation work for the power station. The work was evenly divided, with a joint company called Iroquois builders in the Canadian half, while a joint company of American heavyweight companies: Walsh, Perini, Morrison-Knudsen, Peter Kiewit and Utah built the American half, under the direction of New York Power Authority, led by Robert Moses.
Straddling the River, the power station is 195 feet high, 3,216 feet long, and has 32 turbines, with a generating capacity of 1,957 MW. The Canadian and North -American teams had contrasting approaches to the specific work. The Canadians, given their familiarity with cold conditions, continuously placed concrete, based on the insulating value of wood forms and the highest elevators that provided the most internal heat. Americans limited their placement to an eight-month season, using steel ways that saved time and shorter labor and lifts.
The second largest structure, the long prey Sault, a concrete control structure of 2,960 feet of 114 feet with 30 sections of spill, is on the southern channel of the river at the western end of Barnhart Island. It was also built by the joint company of the main north -American companies.
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Kentucky’s Badgett Mine Stripping Corp was the winner of the Long Sault Canal, the longest navigation channel in the project. He used “The Gentleman”, a trawler of 650 tonnes of the Kentucky coal fields with a rise of 85 feet in length, to remove 3.9 million cuts of glacial rock and glacial clay to form the 10 miles channel and also to build a 300,000-k-yd embankment. The 27 -foot channel deep, 442 feet wide, passes the Long Sault Rapids and carries the traffic of St. Lawrence Saway to the south of the river channel. Badgett’s work was supervised by the United States Army Engineers, a St. owner’s construction agent, St. Lawrence Seaway Development Corp. (SLSDC).
The worst problems were the two locks on the Sault Long Channel. An article in 1955 stated: “It changed 498 feet in planning, to avoid a dangerous line of failures, this blockade [Grass River Lock] It has been moved to an underlined place with the troubled marine clay. The only good description of this clay is that it looks like and cava like blue cream cheese … [the contractor’s] The rear trucks slide and sink into this miserable material. “Dutcher Construction Corp., the contractor in charge of eliminating 3 million tons of the clay, was plagued by rubber hunting roads and a sticky removal area and went bankrupt.
For the lock of Robinson’s bay, the excavation had to go 120 feet through the Boulder -trewn Till glacial. The contractor, Jack & Jim Master Inc., chose to use scrapers instead of power shovels and ended by default, replaced by Tecon Corp.
The floods caused by the construction of the plant flooded 16.5 square kilometers of cultivated land and eight villages, which require a move of 6,500 people and the change of 34 miles of roads and 40 miles of railways, mainly on the Canadian side.
The Iroquois dam, 25 kilometers upstream of Long Sault, is controlled at the head of the electric pool. It is a structure of 1,910 feet that joins the wall of a navigation lock at its Canadian end. The intake of Massena, the fourth and final control structure of the river of the project, is a concrete of 692 feet. It incorporates four closed openings and a large bomb station and serves as a drinking water intake for the city of Massena, New York
Forty miles downstream of Long Sault, the Beauharnois channel was taking shape. A dredging team had been digging this 15.5 miles by The Soulanges Rapids, which worked eight months a year since 1930.The central part of the operation was the most powerful drain in the world, a cut -off -heading dredge with a 42 in. Head and pump 17 feet day, capable of passing the pebbles up to 38 inches and heavy 1,500 lb. It was accompanied by two other dredging, 9,000 feet of floating pipe, another 43 pieces of floating equipment such as SCows, and a 600 -labor labor. Finished in the mid -1960’s, 220 million dollars of material excavated.
The Beauharnois Central, completed in 1961, is 3,050 feet long and 80 feet high, with a generating capacity of 1,903 MW.
A tampered cement pneumatic transportation technique was a technique for manipulating money saving materials. The bulk cement was introduced into a pipe through a motor driven and was injected pressurized air. A crew could empty a cement of 2,700 tonnes in 24 hours. The bombs conveyed the cement 4,200 feet to the lots of lots by means of a pipe of 10 in-day. The lady’s pneumatic system was designed by Fuller Co., which originally developed it as a way to move the neat coal.
To allow ocean vessels to access the recently hardened sea channel, the Jacques Cartier bridge had to be lifted to 80 feet next to Montreal. This complex operation consisted of accumulating 14 of the 16 extensions in the southern end. The bridge was so vital that it had to remain in service, so traffic was diverted to two lanes of Bailey Bridging and temporary access roads. The extensions increased by 6 inches at a time, and at 2 feet intervals, concrete courses were poured into the batteries.
On July 1, 1958, Dominion Day in Canada, the last cofferdam was exploited, allowing the river 240,000 feet by second flow to form Lake St. Lake 25 kilometers in length for the next three days, as well as fill the channel of the sea road and the locks on the New York side. The turbines of the power plant were installed and operated in 1959, along with the four locks downstream. The workforce was 22,000 and the whole project cost a billion dollars.
As the project was over, a power struggle broke out on operations. The SLSDC, commissioned by Congress to build and operate the toll installation, which hoped that the United States components of the water route. But the body believed that it should manage the operations, given its experience with many other locks and dams on the Mississippi River, as well as on the Panama Canal. The shipping companies that sought low tolls supported the body, as all the navigable routes operated for the body worked without tolls. The ports of the East Coast, which feared the competition of a low -consumption sea road, favored the SLSDC, which won at the end as an operator. Today, the body is commissioned to maintain and improve the seafront.
The effort to deepen the various connection channels of the four great western lakes began in 1957 and lasted five years. It entailed deepening the Detroit River on Lake St. Clair, the St. River Clair between Lake Erie and Lake Huron, and the Santa Maria river and the Mackinac Strait between Lake Huron and Lake Superior. It involved a workforce of almost 1,000 and the mobilization of a vast fleet to dredge 44 million materials: eight great hurdle dredges; two great hydraulic draques; And a marine hopper dredge, with each deposit of dippers attended by two tugs, a Derrick ship, one or two throws and two to four diapers. In the channels with rock bottom, perforation and explosion were made with the use of specialized drilling vessels.
Ocean vessels accessing the large lakes significantly increased the volume of shipping. As a result, the Calumet-Sag channel was expanded by the vast industrial area of southern Chicago, so trade between the large ports of the lake and the Mississippi-Ohio-Missouri river system could grow even more.
