The skyline in Sarnia is set to change in the coming months as a tall concrete smokestack at the Imperial plant site on the St. Clair River is demolished.
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Steel “climbers” have gone up on the 91.4-m stack that will be dismantled in pieces, starting at the top.
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The stack was built in the early 1970s and hasn’t been used since 2010.
“It’s part of what the site refers to as Area 1. . . the old lubes plant,” said Imperial spokesperson Kristina Zimmer.
“It’s 13 years that he has been sitting idle.”
Imperial Oil manufactured base oils in Sarnia for its lubricants and special products blending and packaging operation until 2010 when it ended that production locally. The Sarnia blending and packaging operation ceased a few years later.
Dating back to the Sarnia refinery’s beginnings a century ago, it blended and packaged products such as motor oils and hydraulic oils.
Imperial continues to operate a refinery, chemical plant and research facilities at its large riverfront site in Sarnia.
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There’s currently “nothing confirmed or in the works” for the northern section of the site where the lubrication operation was located, Zimmer said. “We’ll hang on to it.”
Zimmer said Imperial decided to go with a “top-down approach” to demolishing the stack. “One of the reasons is that it eliminates the potential for a big dust plume that would be created by dropping it” all at once, she said.
“This is definitely a slower, top-down, piece by piece approach.”
Following demolition, all of the material will be disposed of at a facility specializing in industrial waste, the company said.
The demolition approach being used involves four sets of steel “climbers” stretching from top to bottom with a working platform that moves up and down the stack.
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Specialized equipment will be used to dismantle the stack.
“There are a few different phases to this,” Zimmer said. “It’s going to be several months.”
That will include a period “when it looks like nothing is happening, once all the climbers are put up,” she said. “They’re going to be doing work on the inside of the stack.”
“Once the internal work is done, then they’ll start on the outside. They’ll start from the top and bring it down piece by piece.”
There was a lot of focus during planning to ensure worker safety during the demolition work, which is being carried out by a contractor, Zimmer said.
“It’s a team of experts that do this sort of thing.”
The demolition is expected to “generate some noise” so the work is scheduled to take place only during the day, Monday to Thursday, Zimmer said.
She said there is nostalgia around Area 1 at the plant. “It was like the original area of the site when Imperial was built, so people feel a connection with it.”
There has been interest in the demolition project because of that, Zimmer said.
“It’s going to change the skyline,” she said. “If you’re driving down Confederation (Confederation Street) and heading west, this is the stack you can see in the distance.”
It’s also visible to those driving south on Christina Street around the area of the city’s police station, Zimmer said.
“It actually is quite noticeable in the skyline.”
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