PAG means "potentially acid generating"....I won't go into the deep details, but some kinds of rock interact with water to produce an acid tainted environment. This isn't the stuff that might burn you hands, but it will eat at reinforcing steel over time. It is generally considered to be an environmental problem in large mines where water run-off can poison the downstream areas and oceans ( see Britannia mine site history )
On the Sea to Sky highway job, the PAG sites were identified by engineers and geo-techs and flagged for removal from the site.
All of the ID'd PAG material was trucked to this site at Porteau Cove, and loaded onto this barge. I have no clue where it was shipped to, or whether it was dumped in one of the government approved ocean dumping grounds ( yes, we actually have those...there is an active one just off Point Grey)
These are photos from the fly-overs and photo shoots during the construction of the new highway
Metro Blasting rockslide video is at the bottom of the page
Long view of the Porteau area and the barge set up to accept PAG material from the S2S job. The rock bluff on the left... collapsed and buried the highway for several days in 2008.
I have to imagine that someone was getting a pretty good buck for stand by time
The PAG rock was dug out by the road construction contractor and hauled by private dump trucks instead of company trucks
The Royal Hudson steam train runs right by Porteau Cove
The Excavator looks a little worse for wear
Nice work if you can get it...I wonder how the money factor worked out in the end?
The Royal Hudson tourist train steaming past Porteau Cove in the 90's
News coverage of the 2008 Porteau Cove rock slide
And a private video just after the road was cleared
Cool video is here... from the Metro Blasting website. Gary Anderson and Mike Dickinson are friends and mentors of mine the blasting world...experts in dealing with steep BC rock conditions.http://www.metroblasting.com/videos.html
Canada Day 2012, what better way to celebrate than to go into the Canadian rain forest in search of lost mechanized treasures. The growth of the alder trees and underbrush was fairly intimidating, We only had hand tools, but faced a solid wall of green where we wanted to get into. We threw ourselves into the task for about half an hour and started to see good progress. That lead to hours more cutting,. pruning and dragging debris away. The results were definitely worth the effort, the hulking old logging gear was ready for it's close-up shot. Videos of the this site are here.. Press on the "YouTube" logo to get a bigger image. When you get to the YouTube site...then you can press the icon for "full screen" When you are done looking at these photos, and have a few minutes to spare...here is a link to a story that was on the front page of the Province newspaper on May 13 2012. It's a tale about a tragic workplace death of a friend of mine at Toba Inle...
In the 90's I got into scuba diving to solve some problems at work. I had been building docks,boathouses and the like for a few years (loved every minute of it)...when it came time to do various underwater chores...the divers that got hired were just not up to the task....they were good divers,but not great at working underwater. Keep in mind these are pre-regulation days in light commercial diving. The joys of work dives frozen fresh water on top of sea water Diver Mike So I decided ...I'll just do it myself. I signed up for a scuba course in Sechelt and met a man who would go on to be a huge factor in some great future times....Bill Brooks. I'll leave those tales for another time. Flash forward a few years...Bill and I have salvaged sunken boom boats, a slew of pleasure boats at the bottom of a damaged marina and had experimented with dives past 200ft. By the time of this story rolls around I'm an establish local work diver. In the cou...
All hail the Emperor of Faltering America. The Titanic hasn't struck the iceberg, but it will. It must. It always does. What has happened here...very slowly...then very quickly...is that the actors on the large stage of this old turning world...have shed their costumes. They are naked. Their slavish ambitions to power and obscene wealth are laid bare for all to see...and the unwashed population thinks it's a soap opera, a video game, a Matrix sim....but no. It's as real as the the most violent and vile parts of the Old Testament We...here...now... have grown much much too comfortable. Fully Lazy and Partially Stupid. Gleefully blind. So drugged and stupefied, it makes morphine look like sparkling water. So... "We the People" now properly and professionally anesthetized can't possibly fight back. We have ever so slowly been pick pocketed and numbed...our moral outrage fully diluted. Ethics, morals and rule of law...are so yesterday...so quaint and useless. ...
Comments
Post a Comment