Lake Region State College Campus Updates: SBHE & Wind Turbine Construction update

Wow - what a busy week. The search consultants from AGB were on campus gathering input for the Presidential Search. They met with students, faculty, staff, and community members. The search committee held their initial meeting on Wednesday afternoon. The ND State Board of Higher Education arrived Wednesday and we hosted a social for them Wednesday evening. SBHE committees met on Thursday morning and the full board met Thursday afternoon. The campus did a great job of hosting the SBHE and Chancellor. We received many comments from them praising our Food Service and Physical Plant staff and their work to host the Board.

Construction is proceeding on the LRSC wind turbine. Mother Nature has been reminding us daily who really has the power. The day the major components of the turbine were delivered, we received 7-8 inches of wet heavy snow. Construction crews had to deal with extremely muddy conditions as the snow melted. The very large construction crane arrived last week to erect the tower assembly. We then had 5 days of high winds that wouldn't allow the use of the crane. This was followed by freezing rain and snow last Friday and Saturday. The crane boom was completely covered with ice and was unusable until the ice melted and fell off. This also caused dangerous conditions with the ice falling from the crane and no work could be done at the site. We installed a web cam to record the construction at the site. The icing conditions also knocked this out, first by covering it with ice and then striking it with falling ice from the pole it is mounted on.

Despite all these challenges, late yesterday the base section of the tower was set in place. The wind is too high today to continue, but based on the weather forcast, they plan to continue the erection this weekend.