This week signalled a major project being undertaken that will change the skyline of the area near the World’s largest Dinosaur. It will also unfortunately disrupt traffic.
Drumheller Mail readers learned in its September 8 edition that ATCO Electric has undertaken an approximately $2.5 million project to install the feeder line to downtown Drumheller underground. This includes burying the feeder line from 17th Street in Midland, where the line descends into the valley from the Michichi substation, all the way to the Gordon Taylor Bridge.
Part of this is removing the overhead line crossing the Red Deer River.
This week crews have begun to install the routing to place the river crossing in conduit attached to the Gordon Taylor Bridge.
“There’s a safety aspect,” said ATCO district manager Wilf Golbeck. “We had a major outage last year on the north side of the river when a piece of large equipment hit one of the power poles as it crossed some industrial yards back there, so taking it out and putting it underground will remove that hazard.”
Because of this, there is a single lane closure on the Gordon Taylor Bridge when the crews are working on the line. Work is expected to last 10 days.
