GPA General Manager John Benavente has acknowledged that the Department of Public Works has some valid concerns about the proposed transport of a 200-ton generator from the port of Guam to the site of the new power plant GPA is building in Dededo.
Benavente is confident those issues can be worked out but officials at the Department of Public Works are not so sure.
DPW’s chief engineer is Masoud Teimoury and he has studied the potential impact that a 200-ton generator might have on Marine Corps Drive.
He says that the 5 or 6 bridges between the port and the power plant will have to be fortified and braced before the generator is off-loaded at the port and hauled up to GPA’s new power plant site in Dededo.
“Any damages to the bridges in addition to any damages to underground utilities are going to have to be handled by the moving company, by the contractor, or by Guam Power Authority. They all have to be fixed. So all roads and bridges and GPA assets underground are all at risk,” Teimoury said.
The generator itself will have to be carried on a trailer roughly 300 feet long. It’ll be riding on a flatbed 16 to 18 feet wide and will take up at least two lanes of traffic.
With a height of 22 feet, it is six feet higher than the traffic lights at some intersections which means the signals at those locations will have to be temporarily removed.
“It’s going to have to be two lanes of traffic and it’s going to have to happen at night with a full police escort. They may have to demolish some curbs and raised mediums where it’s going to impede the travel of this multiple-axle truck,” Teimoury said.
GPA general manager John Benavente told Newstalk K-57’s Patti Arroyo this morning that KEPCO has had a lot of experience transporting heavy loads and the bridges on Guam have recently been upgraded
“What it requires is multi-axle trailers so that they can distribute the load across a wider area and they can reduce the impact on the roads and the bridges,” Benavente said.
But DPW Director Vince Arriola said: “Who’s going to pay for this? This isn’t our bill. We’ve got our mandate to protect our roads. Anything over a certain weight limit I have the authority to either approve or disapprove.”
PNC then asked Arriola: “So you could stop this?”
Arriola answered: “Oh yes, I could stop this. Because this is definitely over the weight limit.”
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