Still In Use

The picture above shows a natural waterfall on the Lachute River in the town of Ticonderoga, in the Adirondack Park in upstate New York. The falls that you see are half the width of what they originally were: the left half has disappeared.

The left half was long ago directed into penstocks – a fancy name for a pipe or channel – that fed turbines that powered factories for two companies. The American Graphite Company and the Horicon Iron Works used the water power. Graphite was mined nearby and refined in the AGC factory, which for me was an AHA! moment given that I had used Ticonderoga brand pencils all through elementary school.

The little building on the bottom left of the photo, brick with peeling rock-face stucco, is where the turbines were located. It’s almost certainly not the original turbine house, but it’s still quite old. Another pleasant surprise was to see that it is still in use and still serving more or less its original purpose:

I’ve found similar reuse across upstate New York and New England: old industrial turbines reused to create electricity for general use. It makes perfect sense as a form of reuse and is generally as green as you can get.