After being without electricity for 18 days, the power is finally back on at the Meadow Lake Mechanical Pulp Mill.
The severe storm which moved through part of the province on June 25th left the facility without power.
SaskPower managed to restore service at around 9:00 last night.
Mill general manager Simon Imray says there was plenty of damage from the storm and the repairs took a long time:
“There was 10 kilometres of line down, and they had to re-install all that line and all the poles that support that line. They were still planning on giving us power on Saturday — and in fact, they managed to get temporary bypass power line erected, commissioned and energized almost a day-and-a-half earlier than that.”
Imray says the weekend will be spent getting the mill running again:
“A couple days to get it back up and running. We have to unplug all the equipment and things like that — the piping. Basically, we got to start with our water treatment plant and get it going first, and our effluent treatment system next, and then slowly we can work our way over to the pulp mill and get it all unplugged and running.”
Imray estimates around 25,000 tonnes of pulp was lost during the down time.