HCA ROAD STORM SERVICE UPDATE

From Blade Runners as of midday today:  "The weather has headed in the direction as originally predicted. We now have the rain and the temps will be warm tonight.  We do not plan to provide service this evening."

HCA TREE + DEBRIS UPDATE

HCA and RA DRB recently authorized Blade Runners to complete about 30 additional tasks clusterwide, ranging from completely removing higher risk and nuisance trees, to treating diseased and infested nuisance trees, to removing newly-stacked Cluster Clean-Up tree debris.  These tasks were planned for completion by January 1, 2013 using available 2012 funds, but some tasks were delayed by other projects HCA and/or residents considered to be of higher priority, and by other Blade Runner storm training and customer demands.  

Blade Runners is in the process of scheduling their expert staff and specialized equipment to coordinate and perform this large amount of work in the most efficient and cost-effective way possible.  And they have asked for our patience.  HCA updates the Trees page of this website as soon as Blade Runners updates their schedule.  Current status was posted today.  Except for storm or emergency response, Blade Runners is closed for business from December 25 through January 1.

RELAC COOLING TOWER UPDATE

Yesterday morning Aqua Virginia delivered two long-awaited and DRB-approved cooling towers to their RELAC facility. 

Once fully installed, enclosed by special sound absorbing panels, and extensively tested, these two high capacity, controllable Evapco evaporative condensers will transfer heat from indoor chillers into the air rather than into Lake Anne.

RELAC typically runs two indoor chillers during the summer and maintains two additional indoor chillers as backups.  Each tower can support two indoor chillers, so RELAC can also maintain one tower as a backup. 

Recent intake modifications eliminated the need for emergency external diesel pumps during low water level conditions.  If all goes well, use of the cooling towers will greatly reduce the need for warm, unreliable, and debris-filled Lake Anne water as a geothermal heat sink, possibly as early as the Summer 2013 cooling season.