Newton Falls to run on hydroelectricity?
How does hydroelectricity work?Wow, sounds like Newton Falls may get their hands in on a new plan that would provide power to the city from the use of hydroelectric generators on the Ohio River.
"Basically, it’s like we’re generating our own power,’" Newton Falls City Manager Jack Haney said.
Sounds like a very interesting, forward-thinking plan.
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Hydroelectric plant
Several years ago, I proposed just such a project for Newton Falls to City Council. It wasn't taken seriously.
For those who might not know it, Newton Falls was the site of the first hydro electric plant in the US. From an article I read stacked beneath mounds and mounds of old newspapers in the old Chamber of Commerce offices above Bank One (now Chase) it seems that the original equipment is still at the dam site behind McDonalds. The same article and an old Chamber brochure was the source of the information about the first hydroelectric site.
I proposed a project much like that initiated at the Grand Cypress Hotel in Buena Vista Village near Walt Disney World,Florida. In that project people from all over the world donated old dilapidated trolleys and parts and others came from countries everywhere to refurbish them. The Grand Cypress Hotel has had an electric trolley system dating (much like those in vogue at the turn of the nineteenth to twentieth century) running throughout its property and even goes through one of the lobbies. All from donations and some grants.
I suggested that there are people (and clubs) that would jump at the chance to rebuild an old hydroelectric plant, much like the putt-putt and flywheel engine club members like to tinker with those old things simple for the job and experience of it.
While the old plant could never deliver enough electricity to fulfill the needs of a modern town, not even one as small as Newton Falls, it could power certain things like Christmas decorations or maybe the downtown lights. And it could be a tourist attraction.
What City Council did was merely ask the Army Corp of Engineers what it would cost to build a new, modern plant on the site, which turned out to be about 1.3 million dollars. So much for the imagination of our fearless leaders. Where do we get these people?
Later,
Darrell
Later,
Darrell