West Palm Beach to Weston, FL
Subcontractor
April 2019
Corbett-Sugar-Quarry (CSQ) line project included adding a 500 kV line from Florida Power & Light’s (FPL) Corbett Substation to a new 500 kV section of FPL’s existing Sugar Substation and adding an approximately 68 mile 500 kV line from Sugar to FPL’s Quarry Substation in Miami-Dade County. The CSQ 500 kV line provides a transmission import ability of approximately 1,200 MW which addresses Florida’s southeast regional needs through 2030.
P&J’s major items of work includes ROW improvements, site preparation, road repair, and foundations and transmission line construction. The ROW improvements and site preparation consisted of the installation of silt fence, floating, and implementation of other turbidity control measures; vegetation clearing, removal, and mowing as applicable in upland and wetland areas; construction of at-grade and raised unpaved aggregate patrol roads and transmission structure pads; installation of culvert crossings; maintenance of an existing levee road access during construction; installation or modification of fences and gates; as-built survey; and restoration of disturbed areas including removal of debris and excess materials. P&J also provided on-site erosion control methods and created a Stormwater Pollution Prevention Plan.
Approximately 15 miles of the 68-mile ROW were built through canal waterways in the everglades. P&J stringently adhered to environmental stewardship and permitting concerns as heavily-protected wetlands surrounded the project work. Crew members worked in waist-high water with amphibious equipment and developing specialized techniques and solutions to address the challenging conditions.
P&J crews created a procedure for sewing wide bolts of structural support fabric both in and out of the water. This meant two sewing machines going at once, one heavy-duty commercial machine for dry land and a smaller battery-operated machine for in the water.
To avoid creating on-site safety hazards and dangers with trucks hauling aggregate, P&J moved much of the fabric sewing off site and tightly scheduled the on-site laydown. Pieces of fabric were laid side-by-side, sewn together, and then wrapped up into a roll to be transported to the ROW on a front-end loader. Crews could then pull the material along the ROW to place it and sew it to the previous roll. The overlapping fabric at the seams and extra width also provided an additional best management practice to further protect this sensitive environment during construction. Including the sewn fabric, P&J customized a deliberate delivery system of more than 1M tons of material efficiently and safely.