Cable from Ashtabula's docks and chemical plants

A working lake port with chemistry behind it

Ashtabula loads and unloads on Lake Erie: coal and ore docks, aggregate and bulk handling, and the conveyors and stackers that go with them. Chemical and plastics production occupies the ground behind the waterfront, and power generation shares the same stretch of shore. Bulk handling means dust as well as salt, and the two together settle into every unsealed enclosure on the site.

SR-11 ties the harbour to I-90 and Norfolk Southern serves the docks directly, so material moves out easily once it is gathered. The difficulty is never the road. It is what several winters of lake air have done to the cable while it waited.

What chloride does to a jacket

Air off the lake carries chloride, and chloride attacks the places cable is weakest: the jacket surface, the exposed shield, and every termination. A jacket that looks whole can be hard and crazed at the crown of a bend. A copper shield can be green through its length while the insulation beneath it is still sound, and that combination confuses any count done from a photograph. Insulation usually outlives the jacket in this air, which is why the outside of a reel says so little about what is on it.

The useful description is not age but exposure: where the cable sat, whether the structure was open to the weather, and whether the run passed through a wash-down or a fume area. Two reels of the same cable from the same plant can be very different items on that basis alone.

Bulk handling and the cable that rides with it

Stackers, reclaimers and conveyors run on festoon and reeling systems, and the cable on them flexes in gritty air all day. Conveyor control runs are long and low-count, and they are the first thing abandoned when a line is shortened or a transfer point is moved. Most of that cable is direct-buried or in tray, and a run that failed at one end is often sound along the rest of its length.

• Festoon and reeling cable on stackers
• Conveyor control and interlock cable
• Tray cable in open chemical structures
• Medium voltage at dock substations
• Welding cable from maintenance shops

Switchgear at the generating end

Generation on the lake means switchgear, protection and control cable built to a specified jacket and shield. That cable is normally replaced on a programme rather than abandoned, and the removed lengths tend to be documented as they come out, which makes the review the straightforward part of the job.

The awkward part is timing. Outages are short and fixed, and cable comes off during them, so a lot can appear and need collecting inside a window that was set months earlier.