The Navarre-based construction crane manufacturer Comansa has joined forces with Thalle Construction Company to participate in the Kentucky Lock project in the United States. This initiative aims to build a hydraulic infrastructure in the town of Gilbertsville, in the US state of Kentucky, to improve the navigation of the Tennessee River just 22.4 miles from the point where it joins the Ohio. Its promoters are confident that the work, begun in 2005, will be fully operational in 2029 after having completed an investment of more than 1,350 million euros.
Specifically, the new lock, measuring approximately 33.53 metres long by 365.73 metres wide, will allow barges to transit the Tennessee without the need to divide them, as has been the case until now. To achieve this objective, Comansa is providing a large number of tower cranes of different sizes and capacities that the operators are using to build the structural walls and other critical parts of the navigation channel.
From there, the US Army Corps of Engineers, who have been working on the construction for the past nineteen years, are confident that they expect to complete the work in the near future. They also reported that, although the work has been developed with federal funding, the vast majority of the personnel as well as the materials come from the state itself.
In this sense, one of its main administrators, Jeremiah Manning, explained that the main materials, such as rock and sand, are sourced from facilities near Gilbetsville itself. In addition, he noted that all the concrete used, some 375,000 cubic metres, is manufactured on site and that more than 400 workers are involved in this work in the busiest months.
Source: diariodenavarra.es