Icejam Continues To Grow

Friday, January 25, 2008 02:21 PM

Prince George, B.C. - There's no end in sight to the cold temperatures, and, thus, seemingly no limit to the incredible growth of the Nechako River icejam.

In a 24-hour period, another 1.5-kilometres of frazil ice, or soft ice, has made its way to the head of the jam, so the entire mass now spans 13-kilometres in length.

However, City spokesperson Kevin Brown, says "The ever-increasing icejam does not impact the ongoing work of trying to get rid of ice in the lower part of the river."

Brown says the Amphibex, the amphibious water excavator, continues to chip away at the foot of the jam and will do so through the weekend. The City's 10-day contract with owner, Eco Technologies, expires at 10am on Tuesday morning. Brown says a technical team from the local Emergency Operation Centre, "will be doing an assessment this weekend to determine the effectiveness of having the Amphibex at work and whether or not we should as Eco Technologies to stay some time longer."

As for the warm water pipeline, Brown says two-thirds of the line is in place -- 1.7-km of a 3-km line from Canfor's Intercon Mill -- and it is on target to be complete by Sunday morning and ready for testing on Monday.

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Posted on Friday, January 25, 2008 02:21 PM in News by 250 News

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Comments

Posted by: gitterdun on January 25 2008 2:57 PM

I'd really like to know what the exact cost is for each hour the machine actually worked including transportation/freight, additional expenses, etc.

Posted by: vocer on January 25 2008 3:14 PM

This is a link to who makes the Amphibex. For 375K we maybe could have bought one

http://www.amphibex.com/

Posted by: vocer on January 25 2008 3:21 PM

Actually upon looking around it seems these things cost around 1.25 Million bucks. But weve spent way more than that already. If we had had it we could have broken the ice up before it became a problem. At 375K for 10 days these guys must have thier machine paid off already.

Posted by: Harbinger on January 25 2008 4:17 PM

Betcha there are some people who would wish that global warming would just hurry up.

Posted by: Harbinger on January 25 2008 4:17 PM

But this isn't climate. Right? It's the weather.

Posted by: getajob on January 25 2008 4:30 PM

Well i must say that this floating Tonka toy is doing about as much as most people expected from it!
Get the dynamite and get this silly thing over with. No worry about killing any fish in your area, pollution is doing that. Play time is over , getherdone!

Posted by: northman on January 25 2008 4:47 PM

"Get the dynamite and get this silly thing over with"
-I agree. But it should have been done when the jam first started. Its insane to think dynamite cant do the job because a good explosives expert can move half a mountain in a short period of time.

Posted by: owl on January 25 2008 5:01 PM

An explosive expert can move half a mountain???????

I have yet to see that. Can you please give me an example of that? The mountain will "move" alright. The rocky part will move from being a large rock mass to being a bunch of smaller rocks. Generally speaking though, they will remain in the same place. It is mechanical shovels and trucks that do the moving.

The ice is a bunch of ice pieces. They are already broken up and interlocked and some I would expect are refrozen together. With such a large jam, the ice will be blown UP and will fall back DOWN again and what is left is a re-arranged ice jam .....

;-)

Posted by: owl on January 25 2008 5:03 PM

Maybe we can get the water bombers to drop some real bombs ....

;-)

Posted by: travism on January 25 2008 5:15 PM

I was a blaster for few years and I can tell you that with rock, if it is fragmentedit is a pain in the ass to get to break. Dynamite works by causing a rapid expansion of gas, this is why you feel the concussion of it. If there is a bunch of slips and airspaces in the rock, the shock created by the blast gets dissappated and doesn't have nearly the effect. If this ice is fragmented pieces, than, the blast wont do much good at all.

Getajob, you are right with a mountain you usually have good solid rock and a bit of powder does wonders.

Posted by: travism on January 25 2008 5:21 PM

Owl,

As far as moving the mountain, you just need more powder.

;-)

Posted by: Don Wilkins on January 25 2008 5:41 PM

Owl, the difference is that all that broken rock does not have a river flowing under it. They use to blast ice jams and it worked quite well.

Problem is that we have waited too long. Setting charges along the lead edge now and breaking up a hundred feet at a time would take a long time.

The time to do it was when it first started.

Posted by: heidi1555 on January 25 2008 6:02 PM

The Amphibex continues to make progress given the situation it's been thrown into.....
Hey, Eco Technologies come drive across Canada in winter and clean up this huge mess we made over a month ago!! And do it in one week or it's all your fault!!!

:)

Bad luck with the cold spell but it still is out there working and chipping away. Too bad the Amphibex wasn't found weeks earlier so the river didn't have a chance to get so out of control. Live and learn.
Go Eco Technologies Go!!! I still have faith in you guys.
:)

Posted by: Quaddin on January 25 2008 8:17 PM

Well lots of arm chair quarterbacks... I think they (city engineers, Mayor, and who ever else is involved) are doing a pretty good job considering what they have to contend with. Should the river have been dredged prior to the cold weather.. Probably but then folks would complain about the high cost to dredge a river when no one ships by river and others would complain about damaging the river. Political hot potatoes.

Although dredging is most likely the way to go for the future your dammed if you do and your dammed if you don't. I think they are trying to fix the problem with out breaking the bank. As this is not a problem that comes along everyday they are doing what they can and what the engineers are suggesting and hopping it helps but continued cold weather will only make it worse. I think the hoe on floats will have a job until spring. As for the hot water being piped 3 klm's to warm the river, I would put about three hoes in the river before I would spend money piping more water into the river. As long as the cold weather persists we will have an ice jam.

Posted by: getajob on January 25 2008 9:07 PM

Hmm turf the Tonka toy and blow the ice up........heck States does it all the time with great success. Google it PG and save some money and homes.

Posted by: owl on January 26 2008 12:28 AM

"As long as the cold weather persists we will have an ice jam."

We have cold weather every year. We do not have ice jams every year. The problem is not the cold weather, the problem is primarily higher water volumes after much or all of the surface was frozen. With indadequate room under the ice for the additional water to flow, and possbily even the weather getting warmer to weaken the ice even further, the surface ice broke, floated down the river, and got hung up on a frozen portion of the Fraser.

As ice floated over ice, it grounded the ice underneath and closed off the open water below, creating a dam.

If it was spring, no additional ice would form and methods such as dynamiting as well as mechanical removal of ice would work quite well.

The interestingt thing about a narrow open channel is that if the water finds it, the velocity stays relatively high and the water temperature required to close it back up will need to be lower than with a wider and more slower moving river. Put some warmer water into it and it should stay open to even lower air temperatures.

Posted by: lostfaith on January 26 2008 9:01 PM

Owl, The ice actually got hung up on the
Huge gravel bar at the mouth of the Nechako. Check it out at Google Earth