Dismantling Moapa’s Reid Gardner

By VERNON ROBISON

Moapa Valley Progress

It has got to be the biggest, and toughest, pair of scissors ever! These huge shears are attached to the business end of a Komatsu PC1250 excavator, and they can really get the job done. Looking like a crab-clawed monster, the machine reaches out and effortlessly cuts through everything from thick plate steel to heavy I-beam columns. One bite at a time, the insides of heavy industrial buildings are reduced to a pile of rubble.

That is what has been going on lately at the former Reid Gardner Power Station in Moapa. Skilled crews from demolition contracting company Remedial Construction Services (RECON) have been systematically dismantling the decomissioned coal-burning power plant owned by regional utility, NV Energy.

“The common belief is that it takes skilled craftsman to build something but anyone can tear it down,” said Joe Vendetti, a Vice President of RECON who is overseeing the Reid Gardner project. “But that is not true, especially with a job as complex as this. Demolition is an art form. And it takes a skilled and experienced crew to do it.”

The company has had control of the site since early this year, and they have been executing a lengthy and detailed plan for the old plant’s complete dismantling.

Vendetti said that he has assembled a ‘cracker-jack’ team of some of the best demolition workers in the business from all across the country to take down Reid Gardner. Much of the demolition crew has come from the shipyards of Brownsville, Texas where they have spent their careers dismantling huge military vessels.

“A lot of these guys have worked tearing down decommissioned aircraft carriers and the like,” Vendetti said. “They know what they are doing. We have put our A-team on this job because these power plants can be tricky projects.”

Vendetti, who lives in Saratoga, New York, said that in his career he has been involved in the demolition of no less than 34 power plants like this one, all across the country. Each one has posed unique problems along the way, he said.

“There is always something a little different about each one,” Vendetti said. “Each one has had to endure its own unique stresses and strains during its lifetime. So they each have to be treated a little differently. It is never just a routine approach to take. There is always a new challenge to watch out for.”

Safety is the most important part the project, Vendetti said. “Our main goal is just to have everyone leave the project the same way that they came,” he said. “So we have tons of safety procedures in place to make sure that happens.”

From a casual glance from the distant Interstate 15, it doesn’t really look like much has happened at Reid Gardner. But a closer look reveals just how much has been done. More than 19,000 man hours has already been devoted to the project, Vendetti said. And the real fun is just beginning.

Much of the first few months were spent in preparation, planning and engineering. In addition, crews have set to work in demolishing a lot of the ancillary buildings at the plant. These include cooling towers, machine shops, warehouses, conveyor systems and more.

But before the lion’s share of the job can be started, there is the huge task of removing toxic asbestos material from the plant’s four generating units. For that, the company has called in a small army of nearly forty asbestos abatement specialists from California to do the job.

As of the middle of June, the asbestos removal was still ongoing in the plant’s older units 1, 2 and 3. But 100 percent had been completed in the newest and biggest Unit 4.

That has allowed for demolition crews to move in and start gutting out the interior of the #4 unit which is currently underway. Workers and equipment have begun tearing out anything that is not structurally necessary to support the huge boiler at the heart of the unit. That support framework, and the boilers themselves, will stay in place until a later stage of the project.

In the meantime, what happens to the hundreds of tons of material that is being torn out of the plant?
The asbestos itself is being contained and taken off site for appropriate disposal.

The concrete undergoes a process where the steel rebar is removed and recycled. The concrete is then crushed. Clean concrete is recycled and can be employed for many other uses. If the concrete has been contaminated in some way, it will be placed in a permitted landfill at the plant site.

The tremendous volume of metals at the plant are divided into two categories: ferrous metals and non-ferrous metals. Ferous materials including iron and steel will be sold on the market for recycling as scrap metal. The non-ferrous materials; consisting of the more valuable copper, lead, zync and other alloys; will also be sold for re-use.

Once all of that is cleared away, the four boilers, along with their supporting framework and accompanying smokestacks will be the last to come down. After several months of study, engineering and detailed planning, precision explosives will be placed at critical points of these structures. All personnel will then be removed to a safe distance and the charges will be detonated.

This final implosion is expected to take place sometime near the end of this year.