Union trades workers building new CapX2020 transmission line

From the Minneapolis Labor Review, February 25, 2011

By Steve Share, Minneapolis Labor Review editor

CLEARWATER —  A giant drill bit rises out of a hole, dripping water and mud. Bruce Winter, Albany, tosses the weighted end of a tape measure into the hole to check its new depth. “Right now it’s 36 feet. It’s got to go down to 52 feet,” reports Winter, a member of International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 160.

How long will it take? “If you tell me that, I’ll give you a million dollars,” Winter replies. “We hit a rock shelf… Some of this stuff takes a long some. Some of them go quick.”

The hole the IBEW Local 160 team is drilling will be filled with concrete and become the foundation for one of 157 steel towers to be built for a 28-mile, 345 kilovolt electric transmission line from the Monticello nuclear power plant to a new substation northwest of St. Cloud.

The Monticello-St. Cloud transmission line is the start of the CapX2020 project, which in its first phase will invest $1.9 billion to build four new electric transmission lines: from Fargo to Monticello (238 miles), from Bemidji to Grand Rapids (68 miles), from Hampton, Minnesota to Rochester to LaCrosse, Wisconsin (150 miles), and from Brookings County in South Dakota to Hampton (230 miles).

CapX2020 is a joint initiative by 11 utility companies in Minnesota and the region, including Xcel Energy, which is building the Monticello-St. Cloud line. Construction of the Monticello-St. Cloud line began in November 2010 and is due for completion in December 2011.

Above: Members of IBEW Local 160 drill a hole for a tower. They’re running water into the hole to keep it from collapsing.

Above: Local 160 member Bruce Winter drops a weighted tape measure into the hole to check its new depth. More photos on facebook

CapX2020 is the first major upgrade of the region’s electrical transmission grid in almost 30 years and will bring thousands of construction jobs.

“This is the biggest construction project now in the state of Minnesota,” says IBEW Local 160 member James Samuelson, leading a reporter on a February 8 tour of work on the Monticello-St. Cloud line.

A study conducted by the University of Minnesota Duluth’s Bureau of Business and Economic Research estimates CapX2020’s job impacts for each year of construction (including directly created jobs, indirectly created jobs, and induced jobs):

• 2010: 571 jobs;
• 2011: 2,257 jobs;
• 2012: 4,580 jobs;
• 2013: 7,802 jobs;
• 2014: 5,907 jobs;
• 2015: 2,435 jobs.

CapX2020 couldn’t be a better example of how investing in infrastructure creates jobs. Lots of jobs.

In addition to the construction work on the line itself, the project is using local contractors to provide materials: a plant in Hager City, Wisconsin is manufacturing the towers; a company in Winstead, Minnesota is galvanizing the steel towers; and a company in Minneapolis is fabricating rebar for use in making the tower foundations, which will use concrete supplied by a company in Elk River.

Members of IBEW Local 160 are clearing trees from the right-of-way, erecting the towers and will be stringing the transmission lines. Members of Operating Engineers Local 49 are running the cranes to lift the tower pieces into place. And members of Ironworkers Local 512 are assembling cages for the caissons for the tower foundations.

Local 160 members working on the project are from Minnesota, Wisconsin, South Dakota and Michigan’s upper peninsula. “In this trade, you’re like a cowboy, you travel around,” Samuelson reports.

The new Monticello-St. Cloud transmission line runs alongside Interstate 94, crossing the highway several times, with towers 140-170 feet tall spaced about five per mile. About 25 percent of the towers now are in place and can be viewed from the highway.

Work is taking place over the winter, when the ground is frozen, to minimize damage from heavy equipment to local roads and wetlands. “The wintertime is the best time to set the structures because the ground is frozen,” explains Steve Walther, Princeton, the IBEW Local 160 member who is the project’s general foreman. “We can’t damage any of the wetland.” Road restrictions will begin in March and will shut down construction at some tower locations. “A lot of our equipment is too big to drive on the county and township roads,” Walther says.

The day of the February 8 tour, winter is in full-blast: the morning temperature is 14 degrees below zero, with windchills of 27 degrees below zero.

“Today we have about 24-mile-per-hour gusts,” reports crane operator and Operating Engineers Local 49 member John Walrod, Coon Rapids. He can only test his equipment this windy day, rather than set another tower into place.

“The last two weeks we’ve lost probably five days because of the wind,” Walther notes.

Strong wind is a good sign, however: development of wind energy production in southwestern Minnesota and the Dakotas — along with growing demand for electricity — is one of the key reasons why CapX2020 is needed. The CapX2020 lines will help to bring electricity generated by wind power to hundreds of thousands of electricity users throughout the region.

For more information:
www.capx2020.com

Above: Along a road near the Monticello nuclear power plant, completed towers await power lines, which will be strung between the towers with the aid of a helicopter.

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