Construction—North America—Canada—Hydro & Marine Structures
Hydro-Canyon Saint-Joachim Project:
DYWI ® Drill Soil Nails permit long-term Slope Stabilization
The Hydro-Canyon Saint-Joachim project is a new hydroelectric facility
under construction on the Sainte-Anne du Nord River in the community
of Saint-Joachim, Quebec, in southeastern Canada.
Photos reprinted courtesy of AXOR Group Inc., Canada
The run-of-river facility is being built next to
the 60m high Sainte-Anne Waterfalls and will
have a nominal capacity of 23.2MW after its
completion, which is scheduled for November
2016. The facility will produce an average of
82,400MWh of renewable energy per year,
which is equivalent to the needs of 4,800
local households.
The project involved extensive slope
stabilization to ensure a reliable access to
the powerhouse site.
Due to challenging access constraints and
the need to prevent any visual impact on
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the popular tourist attraction of Sainte-Anne
Falls, the decision was made to construct
three permanent retaining walls.
The main retaining wall crosses the
Cap Tourmente fault line, where challenging
ground conditions were anticipated and
effectively encountered. These included
very steep natural terrain slopes, extremely
dense soil in the lower sections of the wall
and the presence of large boulders.
For the retaining walls, DSI Construction
Canada supplied a total of 1,671 permanent
DYWI ® Drill Hollow Bar Anchors that were
used as soil nails. The highest sections of
the soil nail walls are 20m high and had to
be stabilized by up to 11 rows of up to 18m
long soil nails. The DYWI ® Drill Hollow Bar
Systems were supplied with carbide drill bits
in diameters of R32N, R32S, R38N, R51L, T40
and R51N.
All hardware was galvanized for long-term
corrosion resistance. Following soil nail
installation, a permanent concrete facing
was applied on top of the shotcrete retaining
walls to guarantee a minimum service life of
75 years.