BRINGING THE
POWER
Unique underwater utility cable installation
project powers island Floridians
By Stephanie Rieselman
I
n 1921 and 1926, two powerful
hurricanes split Florida’s Captiva
Island apart and left behind two
islands divided by a deep pass from Pine
Island Sound into the Gulf of Mexico.
Today the quiet northern island, known
as North Captiva, suffers a stark variance
from its southern island twin, Captiva. Over the years North Captiva’s electrical
system connecting North Captiva to
the mainland started showing signs of
aging. Ayres Associates’ Jan Ash found
this quite evident as she began working
on the installation of 5.7 miles of utility
cables there.
North Captiva – accessible only by boat
and plane – is home to 400 people
and an assortment of commercial
establishments. Much of the island’s
southern half is part of a state park,
offering the rare opportunity for man
and nature to co-exist in complete
harmony. Lee County Electric Cooperative
hired Ayres to provide the design and
environmental permitting services
required to install 30,086 linear feet of
power cable system from Captiva Island
to North Captiva Island across Pine
Island Sound in Lee County, Florida.
Into the trenches
“The previous cables were exhibiting
characteristics of failure. We had
to evaluate how to get power from
Captiva to North Captiva with the
least environmental impact,” said
Ash, who retired from Ayres just
weeks ago. Her four decades of civil
engineering experience include utility
infrastructure design; subsurface utility
engineering; construction management
and inspection; and water resources
marine, ecological, and environmental
engineering.
The original cables were installed in the
mid-1980s to provide power to North
Captiva and were recently experiencing
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