A planned power outage will start this weekend in Fort St. James and area.
The outage will impact more than 2,500 BC Hydro customers starting at 8 a.m. Saturday, May 29, to allow for the completion of a new transmission line structure.
Bob Gammer, BC Hydro manager of Northern Community Relations, said the current structure near the Nechako River is being threatened by erosion.
“This is necessary to maintain the reliability of the supply of power to Fort St. James and avoid the failure of the existing structure,” Gammer said of the planned work.
A new structure will be built approximately 30 metres back from the river in which the power line will be relocated to.
“The planned outage is eight hours, but if the structure were to fail, the unplanned outage would potentially affect our customers much longer,” Gammer added.
An outage is required to perform the work safely.
Five other structures along the transmission line were replaced during a planned outage last September.
Gammer said this would be the last part of scheduled improvements to the line, which have occurred over several years.
Power is anticipated to be restored Saturday, May 29 at 4 p.m.
Once the structure relocation work is completed, Gammer said BC Hydro has no further planned work on the line at this time.
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