CT Port Authority: State Pier work on track for completion by year end
Cranes are now being moved onto the pier for the construction in coming weeks of the massive, 300 foot towers that will be shipped out to sea.
The State Pier in New London, re-engineered and redesigned to support the offshore wind industry, has been substantially turned over to the contractor hired to operate it and is on track to be the country’s first terminal with two heavy capacity berths capable of handling a variety of cargoes.
The Connecticut Port Authority also received the first $500,000 payment on a $20 million lease it has with a joint venture Eversource and the North American division of Orsted, a Danish multinational and global leader in offshore renewable energy. The two are among a dozen or so ventures building wind turbine farms on the continental shelf and are using New London and the state pier as a supply hub.
The authority also is on track to show a budget surplus of nearly $1 million a year from now after a succession of massive cost overruns more than doubled the cost of the pier reconstruction over four years from less than $100 million to about $400 million.
The construction and finance updates were presented at a port authority meeting Tuesday. The state pier has sat mostly idle for years at the center New London harbor, the states only deep water harbor.
Marlin Peterson, the authority’s construction manager, said 75 percent of the pier is complete and has been turned over to the contracted operator, Gateway Terminal of New Haven. He said remaining work should be complete within the year.
“When we complete that, New London State Pier will be the only facility in the U.S. that has two heavy lift berths to accommodate a broad range of cargoes,” Peterson said.
Cranes are now being moved onto the pier for the construction in coming weeks of the massive, 300 foot towers that will be shipped out to sea. The turbine blades and nacelles are scheduled to arrive later in the summer.
In coming weeks, the tops of the tower sections will rise above motorists on the 200-foot tall Gold Star Memorial Bridge, which crosses the harbor just above the pier.
Peterson and others said at the meeting that competition of the project continues to be delayed by difficulty associated with creating platforms designed to support pressures of up to 5,000 pounds per square foot. To do so, the Authority contractor, the Kiewit Corporation, had to drive nearly 700 30-inch and 42-inch steel pilings as far as 100 feet though building-sized boulders and granite ledge to reach bedrock .
Drills 4-feet in diameter are being employed to pierce the ledge. So far, the work has consumed, among other things, nearly 5 million pounds of steel, 10,000 yards of concrete, 22 miles of electric cable and hundreds of thousands of tons of stone fill.