BEESLEY’S POINT – The three big, blue boilers at the site of the former B.L. England Generating Station came down in a manner of seconds at precisely 9:30 a.m. April 21 in what took on a carnival-like atmosphere.
With North Shore Road blocked off for blocks, the walk to the end of Beesley’s Point took longer than it did for the boilers to come down, leaving the iconic smokestack in their wake.
Viewers heard two distinct explosions – the first being the fuses that ignited the main charges – and then heard and felt a second explosion, which resulted in the boilers imploding or collapsing into themselves.
Chad Parks with the Beesley’s Point Development Group (BPDG) said the original plan was for Controlled Demolition Inc. (CDI) to take down the boilers and the smokestack at the same time, but they ran into some difficulties that have delayed the demolition of the smokestack by six to eight weeks.
“We’re just going to do them on two separate dates,” Parks said prior to the demolition.
The cooling tower was demolished Sept. 29, 2022.
Parks said including the asbestos abatement, the demolition has been a year in the making; however, the April 21 implosion was about three months in the planning.
Mark Loizeaux, owner of CDI, said the company’s truck was on its way back to the company and had to stop off at the magazine and unload unused explosives. He addressed the delay of the smokestack.
“We told them the chimney would fall onto the debris of the boiler. The boiler is metal, and it would complicate the salvage of the metal,” he said.
Loizeaux said they checked with the state and the permit will be good for the third phase, so they decided to do the smokestack at a different time.
Loizeaux said his company is no stranger to demolition projects in South Jersey. Most recently, they handled the demolition of Trump Plaza next to Boardwalk Hall. In 1972, they dropped the Traymore Hotel, and in 1978, the Marlborough-Blenheim Hotel, he said, which he explained was designed by Thomas Edison. Both were Atlantic City hotels.
BPDG coordinated the implosion effort with Upper Township, which had fire and rescue personnel on the scene. New Jersey State Police provided traffic management.
BPDG will now go to the Planning Board in about three to four months with its site plans for the redevelopment of the area.
Upper Township created a redevelopment zone of approximately 300 acres in Beesley’s Point, which was the site of the former electrical generating station. The site is now zoned for a hotel, marina, and potential housing.
Parks said it is the intention of BPDG to develop the property as a first-class resort. He said BPDG has nothing to do with the Ocean Wind project by Ørsted but accepted the option for allowing an electrical power substation to be constructed on the site of the former coal pile at B.L. England.
Implosion Logistics
Loizeaux said CDI spent four days placing shaped charges and conventional explosives in the boiler house structure to rotate it to the east during the April 21 implosion. He said the purpose of imploding the structures was to fell the debris to the ground where it could be salvaged.
According to Loizeaux, CDI placed a total of 415 pieces of linear-shaped charge explosives on four levels of the structure. Those shaped charges detonate at a velocity of 27,000 feet per second and exert 3 million pounds of pressure per square inch (psi) at that speed, severing steel elements in the structure as part of CDI’s implosion plan.
An additional 91 sticks of conventional explosives were combined with the shaped charges as part of the implosion sequence. The implosion included the use of 4,438 feet of detonating cord that detonated explosives in 156 separate locations. Almost 300 pounds of explosives were used in the controlled implosion.
According to Loizeaux, the implosion went “exactly as planned.”
Contact the author, Christopher South, at csouth@cmcherald.com or 609-886-8600, ext. 128.
