Part of Hatfield's Ferry power plant to be razed

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The cooling towers at another closed coal-fired power plant in Southwestern Pennsylvania will be demolished Thursday morning.

Two concrete hyperbolic cooling towers — one 500 feet tall and the other 550 feet tall — will be imploded at FirstEnergy Corp.'s former Hatfield's Ferry Power Station along the Monongahela River in Greene County, said Todd Meyers, a FirstEnergy spokesman.

The implosion of the concrete cooling towers — scheduled for 11 a.m. — is part of the continued dismantling and removal of the 1,710-megawatt power plant that closed in 2013, Meyers said. A demolition contractor will use strategically placed charges around the towers’ support legs to bring them down.

An implosion in the boiler house to weaken concrete pedestals that support the power generation turbine floor will occur at the same time. The implosion will facilitate the removal of the building, which is to be razed later this year, Meyers said.

A contractor demolished three emissions stacks at the plant on March 4. Two of those stacks were 700 feet tall and the other was 540 feet.

The site is being cleared for future economic development.

The demolition at Hatfield's Ferry comes on the heels of an implosion at the former Cheswick Power Plant on June 2, which toppled an emissions stack that downed power lines when it fell. A boiler house was imploded at the former Duquesne Light Co. Elrama Power Plant in Washington County on May 12, sending a dust cloud into the nearby neighborhood.

Joe Napsha is a Tribune-Review staff writer. You can contact Joe by email at [email protected] or via Twitter .

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