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Sinking ships aid construction JOHN FLANDERS Spectator Staff NANTICOKE — Ontario Hydro's generating station here is getting big enough to sink a ship. Which is exactly what happened this week. The 567-foot lake freighter Ridgetown settled to a five-month rest on Lake Erie's bottom and will be joined by two other ships within the month. But if you're looking for a spectacular Titanic-like display of dunking, don't hold-your breath. It took the Ridgetown three hours to sink. The lake is only about 26 feet deep at the mouth of Hydro's s 1 i p d o c k, where the ships are stationed, and that's why water is pumped into their ballast tanks — to ease them gently to the muddy bottom. The Ridgetown normally draws 20 feet of water, so it settled only about six feet. The water level is four feet below its deck. It and the two other boats will form a three-ship breakwater for Canadian Dredge and Dock Ltd. of Toronto which is to make a channel and turning basin for colliers making deliveries to the generating station. Engineers want the entrace to the 1,000-foot long slipdock deepend to about 32 feet and Hydro has already begun taking soundings from dredges stationed at the slipdock's mouth. Colliers draw about 26-28 feet of water. The Ridgetown left Toronto Monday morning and was towed to Port Colborne where it was loaded with 14,000 tons of crushed stone. Two tugs delicately nudged the aging freighter to its parking spot a few hundred feet offshore, but not before dredges had cleared the way by excavating a "cradle" on the bed for its curved hull. Engineers found the bottom is fairly irregular and rocky, so without a berth the ship's back may have broken under its massive load and Hydro would have been left with a real problem. A U.S. freighter is expected Wednesday and will be eased snugly bow-to-bow with the Ridgetown. The third freighter will sit bow-to-stern with the middle ship, with a slight gap between them allowing passage for other craft. When the project is completed, the water will be pumped from the tanks, the ships refloated and sold for scrap. Robert Phair, project manager with Canadian Dredge, said a wave action of only two feet is enough to snap drills extending from his company's barges. "We're not worried about a north' wind. Every afternoon we get a southwest wind, but Long Point cuts the wave action from the west," he said. "A southeast wind would really drive us because it covers the whole wiritt, of tkz lake. It just rc&ans that you can work steady and not lose two or three days a week." Drilling, blasting and excavation will start on Monday. Mr. Phair estimates that the dredges will move 100,000 cubic yards of rock from the slipdock's mouth to a distance of about 5,000 feet into the lake. Although you can't get a bird's eye view of the action, with a good pair of binoculars you can watch from a viewing stand near the information centre on the southwest corner of the site. The centre has hosted more than 7,000 visitors since its opening in mid-May and public relations officer Colin Hendry expects last year's record attendance of 44,000 to be broken in 1970. The centre is open on weekends only until mid-June — 11 a.m. to 7.30 p.m. on Saturdays and 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. on Sundays. Summer hours to Labor Day are 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., seven days a week. Slides will be shown on the project's development. The 768-acre, $600 million site, throbbing with construction machinery, is beginning to look like a generating station. Aluminum siding and boilers are now being installed in powerhouse units one and two, and the first of four steel flues is now beginning to rise in the 650-foot chimney. Hydro is reclaiming land on the southeast corner to double its coal storage area to five million tons. This is because of a decision to double the plant's capacity to eight units. Towers in the switchyard have been erected and workmen are fitting pieces to a coal conveyor system that will transport 1,000 tons of coal an hour from colliers to the storage area. A start on the second chimney, identical to the first, is scheduled for summer, 1971. When the plant is completed in 1978, it will generate 4,-000,000 kilowatts.