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History

An era ends at High Bridge

It was the end of an era June 28, 2008 in St. Paul, as Xcel Energy took down a major symbol of the city's coal-powered past to make way for a cleaner energy future.

As part of the demolition of the original High Bridge plant, the 570-foot concrete stack was imploded before hundreds of onlookers who viewed the proceedings from various vantage points along the river.

Demolition of the stack by conventional methods would have involved crews working with jackhammers for approximately 14 months. The implosion brought the stack down in seconds through use of a small amount of strategically placed explosives that disrupted select structural elements. Gravity did most of the work.

High Bridge History

The High Bridge generating plant has been a fixture and visible presence in St. Paul since 1923, and it remains a critical source of electricity for downtown St. Paul and the surrounding community. The High Bridge MERP project involves replacing our existing coal-powered facility with a natural gas-fired combined-cycle unit.

A natural gas-fired, combined-cycle plant produces electricity from two sources of energy instead of one. Natural gas is used as a fuel in a combustion turbine, similar to a jet engine. Exhaust from the combustion turbine also is used to make steam in a heat recovery steam generator. Both sources of energy then drive turbines and electric generators to produce electricity. Integrating combustion turbine and steam turbine technology provides an extremely efficient electricity production process. Combined cycle is about 30 percent more efficient than a traditional steam plant. The new unit will include two combustion turbines, corresponding heat recovery steam generators and a new steam turbine to be installed in a new building on the existing site.

The new unit will operate more cleanly and efficiently than the existing coal-powered units. As a result, air emissions will be significantly reduced: sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides and particulate matter will be reduced by more than 90 percent, while mercury will be completely eliminated — please see the fact sheet (181K PDF) for more details. At the same time, electricity output from the High Bridge site will be increased by 270-280 megawatts — enough electricity to supply almost 300,000 typical homes.

Found on Xcelenergy.com

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Trip #1 - (August, 2008)
Members: ToXiC & Myth
Pictures by: ToXiC

Usually most of our adventures are not planned and are last minute. However, I had actually thought about High Bridge in a different aspect. Its in St. Paul, its before RNC, and its right next to the new Natural Gas Plant. This wont be easy.

Me and Dr. Magnus has been taking turns observing the plant. If memory serves correctly we started observing High Bridge over a 2 week period. It was very extensive recon. See what the patrols are doing, when the patrols are, possible entrances, so on. We finally said its going to be tonight or its going to be after Labor Day Week. With RNC coming up it forced us to either go now or wait.

We decided to go for it.

(Left: Control Room)
(Right: Just a random shot)

This night started at 10pm. We headed out to St. Paul. Arrived around 11pm and headed to our vantage point over the Smith Ave. Bridge to do final observations. Nothing had changed, our planned entrance was what it was. As Midnight arrived I called Dr. Magnus and -Anonymous Explorer- to see if they were still down. I was unable to get ahold of Dr. Magnus but -Anonymous- was still down. -Anonymous- showed up with another exploring buddy who's name escapes me. When we told him via TXT message that we were going to do High Bridge he thought we meant the actual bridge. I corrected him, he decided that he wasnt prepared for this and I told him no worries its cool. He decided he could still help out by observing from the Bridge and Shepard Road.

Me and Myth then decided to proceed. We entered and hid in some woods just observing and listening to see if anyone had noticed us enter. Nope. We then were faced with the problem of semi-light in the debri area. It was good cover but if someone was looking they might see us heading to the debri. We decided that we should just run as fast as we could towards the debri. So 1... 2... 3... GO!

(Left: -Anonymous- & Co. accross from us on the Smith Ave. Bridge)
(Right: Old Telephone)

We ran as fast as we could without tripping over debri. Unfortunately while I was avoiding Concrete Rubble, Rebar, and other Misc. crap I didnt notice the railroad tracks since they kind of blended in with the dirt. Trip. Tripped on one of the Tracks and ended up slamming both my legs into the other one. That really really hurt. It was all superficial but it still hurt. Luckily I landed into a nice soft dirt pile on my way down. Hah. I got up and ran again into debri to hide in..

As we were resting from our little marathon sprint, guess who calls me, Dr. Magnus! Total Irony.. We had only been in 5 minutes. Apparently he had "overslept". I told him that if he wanted to join us he had better hurry up and get down here. He said maybe in an hour and I told him we had already entered so he stayed at home.

(Left: The new Natural Gas Fired High Bridge Power Plant)
(Right: Huge Tank)

Me and Myth proceeded to go to a window that was open, we had spotted it from the road before we went in. Surprisingly it was even easier than that to get in. It was too easy, I couldnt believe it. We had entered through 1 of the many
*-----CENSORED-----* that we had found when we walked up to the main building.

Upon entering we noticed that the place was fairly well lit up meaning we had to watch our shadows and make sure they didnt hit windows. We decided to start at the top and work our way down. So we proceeded to the top. As we went up the metal grated stair cases, I couldnt help but laugh at how much Brute would absolutely love and hate this place. I had a good 5 minutes to think, this building is very tall and going up its stairs is alot harder than going down them and it was just so humid in there, even though the outside temperature was like 70 and cool.

(Left: Upper Level Cat Walk)
(Right: An even larger Tank, Myth Posing for Comparison)

Anyhow, we finally got to the top, slightly panting. It was amazing how high we were. Had an amazing view of Downtown St. Paul, the Smith Ave. Bridge, the new Natural Gas Plant, the River, Lilydale. I thought I saw -anonymous- driving down Shepherd Road so I called him and it was him, I said, "get on top of the bridge im gonna take a picture of you" he agreed that would be funny. He actually ran up the bridge to my surprise. Weirdo. So we messed around for like 30 minutes taking pictures of each other and waiving to each other so on.

After all that we said goodbye to -anonymous- and started out exploration of the High Bridge Coal Power Plant. Woohoo!

There wasnt a whole lot to explore on the very upper levels that we immediately could find. Granted me and myth explored for 5 hours or so and only hit about half of the whole building. The mid levels and lower levels of the complex were just amazing to explore. I wont pretend to be even close to explaining just how wonderful this place is.

(Left: ToXiC observing)
(Right: Asbestos Warning)

Theres a million catwalks, a million I-Beams, a million Cross-Beams, tons of rooms, alot of equipment, lounge rooms, employee rooms, offices, atleast 1 control room, maintenance rooms. Just spectacular.

Back to exploring, on the mid level we explored alot of the catwalks and where they led. We went down to the scrubber first. The scrubber was where some employees worked on the filtration system of the Coal Smoke Stack I believe. We then roamed around the other levels and found alot of things of most I dont even know what they are. Alot of pipes, wires, control mechanisms for the power plants operations. We then found a monitor room that people used to keep an eye on power transfer, pressure, emergency shutdown, so on.

(Left: Some huge Generators)
(Right: Nifty Random Hallway Shot)

Now going more towards the lower levels of the complex they were doing alot of Asbestos cleanup in prep for the demolition of the plant. Obviously they wouldnt be a good leader of energy if they didnt cleanup stuff like that, props to Xcel! We didnt really explore too much of the Asbestos rooms for obvious reasons.

As we went lower into the building it got more complex, there were hallways all over, rooms for god knows what, more Asbestos chambers, employees bathrooms and locker rooms, and at some point in the building a huge room filled with iron/lead boilers or something, me and myth arent actually sure exactly what they were used for but we were pretty sure they were conductive.

(Left: ToXiC posing as a High Bridge Employee)
(Right: Interior Shot)

We then headed over to the locker room to see if anything of interest would pop up like notes, objects, so on. We found some pretty cool things. We then proceeded to head over to the maintenance room where surprisingly the room was very open with very large windows. Im fairly sure with all the chairs and desks there it also served as an un-isolated office of sorts. We took a rest and had a few smokes and peeped out at the Crown Vick hanging around the front of the building and took a picture. We decided at this point being 4:30am to head out.

I took some final shots and tried finding our way out, its easier to get in that place than get out, kind of funny. I really think to get the proper perspective on this amazing industrial playground you would have to go and see it yourself. Wow!

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Trip #2 - (August, 2008)
Members: ToXiC & Myth
Pictures by: ToXiC

This time the trip started out smoother. We decided this time it would be a small group. We had called Brute earlier to see if he wanted to join us but he didn't answer. As with last time, we headed over to St. Paul on the bus with our bikes and after getting off the bus we went to the Smith Ave. bridge to observe and see if anything was different than last time. We watched for an hour. Deciding that noone had noticed our last trip into the plant it appeared to have gone unnoticed.

(Left: Giant Turbine)
(Right: Myth Hanging from a Moving Crane)

We proceeded to our former entrance to find it still available. Cool. Another indication that nothing had changed since our last appearance. We walked in slowly and cautiously not taking chances with RNC so close. We were just about in when floodlights caught my eye. Apparently the security this time was awake for our trip. Nifty. We immediately ran about 100ft to a tall dirt pile which had alot of good cover at the top.

(Left: Myth Posing in a Maintenance Shop)
(Right: Long Exposure Shot)

The security was using an SUV with floodlights which I hadnt seen before. It initially headed over to the North end and scanned for a bit, we had the opportunity to easily enter the facility but we decided to observe longer incase there were multiple security cars. The SUV headed back towards its initial starting point and idled out of view for a bit. We were about to move when another flood light caught my eye. Another security car was flanking our hiding position and took us completely by surprise. We decided to wait it out.

(Left: Long Exposure Shot)
(Right: Long Exposure Shot)

The other security car came within 50 feet of us and rolled right on by our nice dirt pile to our relief. The security met up at a office RV and then both took off. We waited awhile to see if they were going to swing around from the other side. After 10 minutes we decided to enter. Minus the hour we waited with Security driving around it was just as easy to enter the building again.

Upon entering we decided this time to make sure we remembered where we had entered. We headed over to the mid levels deciding we should start off again where we had ended last time. After running around we found the "office" part of the building we thought had existed and explored that for an hour. Found long extensive hallways, a work out room, generator rooms, generators, live electric producing rooms (probably for the building), live switch boards.

(Left: Myth Working out)
(Right: Dosnt this seem so out of place? Pillsbury Filling in a Coal Power Plant)

On our way out we found the massive turbine for the plant and I mean it was massive. We checked out some of the Asbestos rooms again, decided it still wasnt a good idea to explore those even thought we found protective suits. On our way out we decided to check out a little bit more of the lower floors that we kind of stayed away from last time. We roamed a bit but decided it wasnt a good idea to check them too much with the security actually roaming the exterior.

(Left: I found this humorous)
(Right: ToXiC having a smoke)

We decided to cut the trip early since I wanted to hit up the GTA Headhouse since it was about to be renovated. As we were leaving I was about to take some finish photos that I missed last time when we heard faint sounds, we listened closer, they were getting louder indicating someone was nearing us. So we hightailed it out of a lit area we were in and silently hid in our entrance room which was totally dark. I was just about packed when we heard foot steps near the door to the main hallways. We went dead silent. A few minutes passed. We werent sure if the guy was right near the door or not but we quietly got the outside and ran like hell. We got to our entrance and left. Rested for a few. Then headed to GTA. Woohoo!

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Trip #3 - (September, 2008)
Members: ToXiC, Dr. Magnus, Mole
Pictures by: ToXiC & Dr. Magnus

I think the previous trip logs explain most of the exploring... So enjoy the pics!

ToXiC's Pics

 

Dr. Magnus's Pics