A River Harnessed: Metaline's $350,000 Power Plant
Sylvester Engineering wins the contract for a 10,000-horsepower development on Sullivan Creek, with surplus electricity promised to the Metaline mines.
The Sylvester Engineering Co., of which F. M. Sylvester is the proprietor, has been awarded the contract for the construction of the power development plant which will operate the Inland Portland Cement Co. plant to be built at Metaline, on the Pend Oreille River.
The plant will cost about $300,000 or $350,000, and will develop 10,000 horse power. The power plant will develop the power of Sullivan Creek and Sullivan Lake. It will be located at the confluence of the creek and the Pend Oreille River, just above Metaline Falls. The cement plant is to be located at the same place.
A 40-foot dam is to be built at the outlet of Sullivan Lake, in which enough water will be stored to maintain an average flow during the dry season sufficient to develop 10,000 horse power. Three miles below the lake another dam will be built across Sullivan Creek, and the water of the creek will be turned into a large rectangular flume of 9 feet. This will carry the water three miles farther downstream and discharge it into the power plant, where it will take a sheer drop of 400 feet. When this water reaches the cups on the big water wheel it will be traveling at the rate of 100 miles a minute — so fast, in fact, that the entire volume of water coming down the flume forces its way out and into the cups in the form of a jet less than three inches in diameter.
Not all of the 10,000 horse power to be developed will be used by the cement plant, and the surplus will be sold to the mining companies in the Metaline district.
Mr. Sylvester has already started a crew of men to work making a road to Sullivan Lake from the Pend Oreille River. The power plant is to be completed in nine or ten months.
A shipment of a carload of machinery consisting of two hoisting engines and equipment arrived in Newport this morning for Mr. Sylvester, and will be taken to Ione, to be rafted through the Canyon. Another carload is expected to arrive tomorrow. Last week two carloads of horses were taken down to be put to work on the job. They are said to be the finest horses ever used in this section.
“When this water reaches the cups on the big water wheel it will be traveling at the rate of 100 miles a minute.”
Hydropower and cement once promised to turn the Pend Oreille country into an industrial corridor; today the same rivers are fought over for energy, fish and recreation. The question of who gets the surplus — industry, the town, or the public — remains familiar.
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