MEMORANDUM
October 4, 2004
TO: DARON JONES
FROM: BILL WALL

SUBJECT: ARTICLE ON CABLE BURIAL NOV/DEC 2004 ISSUE

CALDWELL MARINE INTERNATIONALCOMPLETES SUBMARINE CABLE INSTALLATION FOR ORCAS POWER & LIGHT COOPERATIVE (OPALCO)

Caldwell Marine International recently completed a turnkey submarine cable supply contract for Orcas Power & Light Cooperative (OPALCO). Opalco is the local electrical utility for the San Juan Islands that are located off the North West coast of Washington State.

The contract Scope of Work called for the supply and installation of 2 lengths of 69Kv composite submarine power cable with a 48 fiber unit embedded into the power cable and the supply and installation of a Repeaterless fiber optic submarine cable with 48 fibers. An additional installation of an Opalco supplied submarine fiber optic cable was also completed. All the installations were between Islands in the San Juan Archipelago.

Caldwell Marine International mobilized a lay barge at the Port of Tacoma WA and shipped all its specialized cable burial and laying equipment from their base in New Jersey. The power cable was manufactured under contract to Caldwell by J-Power Systems out of Tokyo Japan and shipped to Tacoma where a heavy lift operation was used to transfer the 200 ton cable pan from the freighter to the Caldwell barge. The submarine Fiber Optic cable was manufactured under contract to Caldwell by Ericsson out of their factory at Hudiksvall, Sweden and shipped on a reel to the barge at Tacoma.

The contract called for cable burial of 1m to 1.25m burial depth in three of the four inter-island links. Caldwell mobilized their articulated Jet Plow with a 2 meter burial stinger fitted for the main burial. Twin 440HP surface deployed water pumps handled the Jet Plow’s water supply. The Caldwell Jet Plow system is equipped with the Caldwell Plow 2000 integrated software package that is utilized for sending commands to the plow from the surface control station and receiving data topside from the plow.

INNOVATIVE APPROACH TO EEL GRASS BED PRESERVATION

Opalco spent almost 2 years preparing the data for the permits for this project. When finally issued the permit “Window” allowed installation only between August 16 and October 30 2004, the contract was awarded in May 2004, so the clock was running. Of utmost importance to both the environmental authorities and the Opalco/Caldwell team was to ensure that the “Zostera Marina” or Eel Grass areas were not impacted by the cable burial operations. At two of the landing sites there were eel grass beds that needed to be traversed by the cable. To complete this part of the project Caldwell designed and built a low impact Jet-Assist Plow deployed directly from a small barge. The Low Impact plow was deployed during burial across the eel grass beds, and then the main articulating plow was deployed once the eel grass area was completed. The Low Impact burial was very successful with little or no impact to the Eel Grass beds, a marine biologist diver inspected the site immediately after installation and shot a video record of the installation.

As the industry knows all too well many of today’s planned submarine utility projects depend on getting a successfully issued permit, this innovative approach to low impact burial was pivotal in meeting the permit criteria and avoiding a long and costly, post-lay mitigation process.