Yesterday and Today: The day of the Schoellkopf power plants disaster – StCatharinesStandard.ca

In 1853 entrepreneurs in Niagara Falls, N.Y., with a view to developing power generation capabilities of the Niagara River, began work on a hydraulic canal that would cut across the village of Niagara Falls, from an inlet above the American Falls to a site on the Niagara Gorge about 460 metres downriver from where the Rainbow Bridge is today.

The canal was completed in 1857 but the potential it offered was not put to good use until the Gaskill Flour Mill was built on the edge of the gorge in 1875. By the end of the 19th century that first facility had been joined by two other flour mills, three pulp mills and a silver plating factory.

At about the same time the water power also began to be used by the Schoellkopf family to generate power for the entire community. This undertaking resulted in the construction, between 1905 and 1924, of three huge Schoellkopf power generation plants at the rivers edge below those industries. Our old photo this week shows what the scene looked like in September 1925 the factories at the top of the gorge, the three power plants along the river.

However, one thing seems not to have been taken into consideration in all this. The water from the canal, after powering the mill wheels atop the gorge, passed through channels bored into stone before emptying into the gorge. Photos from the late 19th century show numerous mini-falls created by water that was pouring from the gorge wall into the river again. But the canal itself, the canal basin and those channels below the mills had never been given protective linings to prevent water from penetrating into the rock. All of that gushing water ended up honeycombing and destabilizing the gorge walls.

The result: on June 7, 1956, a significant part of the gorge wall above those power plants suddenly collapsed. In the morning power plant workers began to notice cracks developing in the buildings walls and foundations and a worrying amount of seepage of water through those cracks. During the day the cracks grew in size, the flow of water increased and rocks began to fall from the gorge wall onto the roofs of the power plants.

And then in little more than 10 minutes, starting at about 5:10 p.m. that day, the entire side of the gorge collapsed onto the three power plants, completely crushing two of them and seriously damaging the third. That one plant was partially returned to service in the next year, but the other two were total losses. The New York Power Authoritys Robert Moses power facility, which began operations in 1961 across the gorge from our Sir Adam Beck facility in Queenston, ultimately replaced the hydro power lost in this 1956 disaster.

Eventually the surviving Schoellkopf plant was demolished and the rubble from all three plants was removed. Today the place where the three Schoellkopf power plants once stood is a large open space used as a maintenance and storage area for the Maid of the Mist tour boat company.

Continued here:

Yesterday and Today: The day of the Schoellkopf power plants disaster - StCatharinesStandard.ca