Wyoming haul road crossing

Project partners on a heavy haul road and conveyor project at Dry Fork Station, Wyoming, got added value when AIL Group’s Big R Bridge came to the table with a Super•Cor Arch and Vist-A-Wall MSE Structural Wall System for a stream crossing in a sensitive wetland area. The partners saved on material, shipping and assembly costs with the Super•Cor Arch and the Vist-A-Walls, and appreciated the flexibility and adaptability of being able to save even further by utilizing Steel Sheet Piling on for a headwall on one end of the plate structure.

Dry Fork Station, currently under construction, is a 422-megawatt coal-power plant, owned by Basin Electric Power Cooperative and the Wyoming Municipal Power Agency. Sub-bituminous coal from the nearby Dry Fork Mine will fuel the station via a mile-long conveyor system.

The inlet side of the stream crossing was quite a bit larger, which made Vist-A-Walls more economical in both materials and construction for its headwall. The MSE wall was also less invasive to the natural wetland that surrounds the area. The other side of the project was smaller, bringing it into a suitable scale for a sheet pile headwall on that side.

The Super•Cor structure took exactly two days to erect and the Vist-A-Walls  took about a week to erect and back fill. The sheet pile headwall was completed in two days. The Ames Construction team leader commented that Super•Cor was the easiest crossing structure his crew had ever put together.