Malcolm Culpepper briefly pauses from his work Thursday morning to explain what he’s doing. “I’ve been on this project on the Alafia River for 3 weeks now. We’re replacing four circuits and adding a fifth circuit. The fifth circuit we’re adding will go from State Road 60 to the
Big Bend Power Plant,” says the veteran Tampa Electric journeyman lineman.
He continues, “We’re upgrading the old lines, because the towers, we discovered when we were going to add the new circuits, were starting to age.”
Tampa Bay Marine hired
Sims Crane to help pull down the aging and deteriorating four-legged self-supporter towers. James Caldwell, CCO, kept the
Kobelco CK1000 crawler crane steady on the barge as he maneuvered the 200ft boom to take down thousand pound sections of the structure.
The towers will soon be replaced by monopoles which stand about 175ft out of the ground and 50 feet in the ground.
TECO’s crew also spent part of the morning stringing transmission lines across the river to cover the 1,700 feet between the poles. This part of the project is expected to be completed by June.
