Seeds of Change
AltaLink’s largest wildland reclamation work in Banff National Park - By Amanda Sadleir Manager, Corporate Communications, AltaLink
F
or AltaLink, the big news story really started way back in 2009, when plans were drawn up for what became the most extensive wilderness reclamation project in the company’s history. Senior Project Manager Brent Sandhu has been involved since the beginning of this project to rebuild AltaLink’s transmission line, called 551L, in Banff National Park. “We had four years of planning before we got the go-ahead from Parks Canada in 2016. The 551L transmission line needed to be rebuilt through difficult mountain terrain, while running through a UNESCO World Heritage Site and Canada’s premier national park. That meant conducting tree and other vegetation management along a 60-kilometre right-of-way with great sensitivity to wildlife, plants and aquatic habitats,” explains Sandhu.
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canadian electricity association - THE GRID 2021 | Renewal
The 551L transmission line connects the Banff and Lake Louise substations, passing through highly sensitive ecological regions of the Bow Valley within Banff National Park. It provides power to a host of world class tourist amenities that service more than four million visitors per year. The goal of the rebuild was to reduce the number of power outages to these tourist destinations and minimize tree contacts with the line to ensure the safety and reliability of the transmission system in this area for years to come. AltaLink’s team of subject matter experts, in collaboration with Parks Canada, put together a one-of-a-kind Detailed Impact Analysis (DIA) that identified every meticulous detail of the environmental constraints along the 450 structure locations on the existing right-of-way. Due to encroaching trees, erosion and flooding in some areas, site specific mitigations were proposed. Specialists in wildlife, vegetation, aquatics and cultural resources all contributed to the development and approval of the DIA.
