Muhlenberg County Kentucky
Mining
Paradise TVA Plant to Use as Much Water as City of Los Angeles
Bowling Green - Paradise, Ky., with a 1950 population of 75, will be the site of what will probably be Kentucky's tallest structures.
They will be the stacks of the huge TVA steam plant now under construction at the Muhlenberg County community.
Towering 600 feet above the ground, the stacks will be higher than the Washington Munument, which at 555 feet is a landmark in our nation's capital. Another measuring stick, the Empire State Building, the world's tallest at 102 stories, is 1,472 feet high.
The Paradise plant itself will be 225 feet high, or roughly the equivalent of a 22-story building. With this height, the building and stacks will constitute a prominent landmark in Muhlenberg and parts of some adjacent counties.
These were among many interesting statistics on the Paradise plant recited at the luncheon meeting of the Bowling Green Rotary Club by Horace H. Mull, assistant construction engineer on the project.
Mull todl the group that the two generating units currently under construction at Paradise will have an operating capacity of 650,000 kilowatts each and are being built at a cost of about 171 million dollars.
The plant is designed to accommodate four units of this size, but even with the upstream reservoirs presently under construction or in the planning stage, Green River will not provide enough cooling water for the entire installation.
Mull said that the water requirements of the units now being built are roughly equivalent to those of a city the size of Los Angeles, and can be supplied by Green River. However, if all four units are installed at Paradise, it will be necessary to construct cooling towers or basins.
The first of the generating units is expected to go into operation in September, 1962, while the second is scheduled for use beginning July of 1963.
They are designed to serve the entire northwestern section of TVA's service area.
The giant boilers to be used in the plant will weigh 18 million pounds, and will be shipped to the Paradise site for assembly in 180 railroad cars.
The coal contract for the plant is held by the Peabody Coal Co., which over a period of about 15 years has contracted to supply 65 million tons to the installation. The contract amounts to some 191 million dollars.
To supply the two units now under construction will require the equivalent of 300 railroad cars of coal a day.
Mull told Rotarians that the labor for the project is being drawn from a radius of some 75 to 100 miles surrounding Paradise and that some 850 persons are currently employed on the project.
At the peak of construction, employment is expected to climb above 2,000. But probably there will be no difficulty in filling this need, since TVA already has 8,000 applications for construction jobs on file.
Once the two units are in operation, the plant is expected to employ 250 to 275 men.
Source: “Paradise TVA plant to use as much water as city of Los Angeles.” The Messenger [Central City, KY], 6 Oct 1960.
Updated April 23, 2020