FOSTER | Work at the Meldahl Dam hydroelectric plant construction is right on schedule, officials said on Friday.
“We are about 25 percent into it,” said Tom Leibham, site representative for City of Hamilton, Ohio, which is in charge of the project.
Commercial operation of the plant will begin in 2014 “in phases,” Leibham said.
City of Hamilton and American Municipal Power, Inc. turned the construction at the Meldahl Project site over to Alberici/Baker Joint Venture to construct the powerhouse in fall 2011. Baker Concrete Construction is headquartered in Butler County, Ohio, and Alberici is out of St. Louis, Mo., Leibham said.
When the plant is completed and in commercial operation, Hamilton’s entitlement is 51.4 percent of the electric output, with approximately 47 other AMP member communities being entitled to 48.6 percent.
On Nov. 28, 2011, the Ohio Power Siting Board authorized the city of Hamilton and AMP Inc. to construct a 2.2-mile long 138-kilovolt electric transmission line in Clermont County. The new transmission line will connect the 105-megawatt hydroelectric facility to the existing 345-kV Zimmer-Spurlock transmission line in Ohio, official said.
“Right now we have had really good weather,” Leibham said, compared to an extremely wet spring 2011. “They are placing structural concrete and it is really going well.”
At the height of construction the site will employ about 400 workers, officials said.
Once completed, the three turbine units will go on line about 60 days apart, in 2014, he said.
The current benefit to Bracken County, where the plant is located in Kentucky, is the lodging and use of local facilities by the workers.
When the $504 million project is done there will also be a picnic area and fishing pier along the Ohio River for the public, Leibham said.
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