No more towers on Tower Boulevard? Ohio Edison replacing lattices witih monopoles

LORAIN — Tower Boulevard's namesakes are coming down. Ohio Edison is replacing 63 steel lattice towers with steel monopoles, spokesman James Cannon said Wednesday. The project is part of the utility's "Energizing the Future" initiative and includes rebuilding a roughly 10 mile stretch of 138kV lines. In addition to the lattices, five wood poles in the area will be replaced, according to information provided to Council by former Safety/Service Director Dan Given in December. "In some areas where we have aging equipment, like this one, we're going ahead and swapping out for newer, updated equipment — just to ensure that they're more efficient," Cannon said. The project is expected to be completed mid-May, depending on weather and resources, he said. It is the second of two sections of work in the area. The first started in September and finished last week and included rebuilds on a 2.8 mile stretch west of Mercy Hospital from the substation on Route 6. The Tower Boulevard work may cause some service interruptions, depending on what crews have to do to switch lines at the individual towers, Cannon said. Residents and businesses in potentially impacted areas will be notified as much as possible, he said. "A lot of this involves, when they put the poles up, they have to go up on the old pole and in some cases they can thread the wires ... into the new towers," he said. "If they can do that, there might be some real brief, temporary outages that affect small areas along the line." He added later, "Certainly along Tower Boulevard that's going to present some unique challenges, just because of where it is — traffic and houses and people." He said traffic will be handled by local law enforcement, but doesn't see the thoroughfare being shutdown entirely He said people can expect a disruption of normal traffic as crews are out. The towers must be taken down in sections, with a contractor scrapping the metal if possible. Cannon said "all of the environmental controls you can think of" are in place, with the metal being tested before being scrapped, and additional testing done on the site as new poles are put in. Energizing the Future started in 2014, with plans to continue investments through 2021. The utility plans to spent $4.2 billion to $5.8 billion on the program between service areas in Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, West Virginia, Maryland and Virginia, according to FirstEnergy Corp.'s website. Contact Carissa Woytach at (440) 329-7245 or cwoytach@chroniclet.com. Follow her on Twitter @CWoytach.