Trenching, Conduit, and Groundwork

Not every phase of a hydro restoration is dramatic. This one was mostly digging.

With the new electrical service energized at the pole, May and June went to getting power where it actually needs to be: buried conduit runs from the service point toward the dam and the future powerhouse area. The excavator opened trenches, PVC conduit went in, and the ground closed back over it — infrastructure you'll never see again, doing its job for the next fifty years.

We also spent these weeks clearing years of brush and overgrowth from the work areas. Some of it was burned on site in controlled piles, the rest hauled off. Under the brush, the site keeps revealing its history: stone walls, old foundations, and the water channels that served the original mill.

It's satisfying work in its own way. Every trench, every cleared sightline, every stump pulled makes the site look a little less like an abandoned corner of the woods and a little more like a working plant in the making.

The bigger news is what's coming: our engineering attention has turned squarely to the dam itself, and one of its abutments has been telling us — in the form of a persistent leak — that it wants attention sooner rather than later. More on that soon.