Ontario Construction News staff writer
The annual summit, held in Toronto this year, is a high level technical conference featuring presentations on some of the most challenging demolition projects carried out around the world.
Ontario Labour Minister David Paccini honoured construction workers in his speech at the summit Oct. 18.
“The hardworking men and women in construction are the ones who lay the foundations, develop infrastructure and build homes,” he said. “Honoured to speak at the 15th annual World Demolition Summit Conference to reiterate our plan to create jobs with bigger paycheques.”
Jeremy Later, operations manager at York1 Demolition, presented details of the former OPG Thunder Bay Generating Station decommissioning.
The former coal fired power generation station had three boilers over 300-feet, three turbines, three precipitators over 200 feet, a 650-foot concrete stack, a water inlet and outlet, and associated outbuildings.
Work started onsite in April 2021 with a large asbestos abatement of Boiler# 1 and prepping the stack for felling and removal of the turbine hall to the north of the boilers.
The stack was felled using explosives in September 2021, the precipitators were detached from the boilers and dropped using explosives in December, and finally the top hung boilers were toppled using explosives in June 2022. A large piece of the project is the sorting, categorizing, preparing, and shipping offsite the ferrous and non-ferrous scrap metals.
Large second member shears and torch men have been working diligently to move the material offsite via truck and rail. The project included abatement of the boiler refractory, demolition of the power generating station, processing and disposal of all construction and demolition waste, and recycling all scrap steel.
Thunder Bay council approved a rezoning application for the site formerly owned by Ontario Power Generation last year hoping for future industrial development.