Village gives thumbs up to Charter project

Nearly $2 million in investments will be coming this summer to Charter Steel’s 639-employee plant at 1658 Cold Springs Rd. in Saukville.

The Village of Saukville Community Development Authority/Industrial Review Committee on May 4 approved plans for a $1.8 million roll-mill cooling tower replacement project planned by Charter Steel.

The contractor for the project will be the Boldt Co. of Appleton.

The project calls for replacing Charter’s field-erected Manley 15 Series wood cooling towers at its roll-mill water-treatment plant in Saukville with four Baltimore Air Coil Co. Series 5000 prefabricated, galvanized steel cooling towers over the existing concrete cold well tank.

Appearing via Zoom, AECOM Green Bay engineer Randall Wodrich said the two towers, in place at Charter Steel’s Saukville plant since 1996, are “past their useful life and need to be replaced,” noting they would be replaced by four state-of-the-art cooling towers similar to those installed by Charter at its Cleveland, Ohio, facility.

Wodrich said the proposed towers at Saukville would run continuously while Charter’s roll mill is in operation, cooling approximately 10,600 gallons of filtered contact water per minute from 110 degrees to 90 degrees, identical to the current cooling tower operations.

Under the proposed product schedule, Wodrich said, Boldt crews would work around the clock during a planned July 1 to 8 plant closure to remove the old towers and install the new ones, with a goal of having “the bulk of the work done” during that time frame.

Wodrich said pre-production construction work will take place in May and June.

The CDA/IRC approved the project, subject to five conditions outlined in the village building inspector’s April 15 letter to Charter Steel:

• A building permit will be required for the installation of stairs and any additional footings or foundation and steel support work to support the cooling towers.

• Stairs will have lighting installed for maintenance personnel.

• Separate electrical and plumbing permits are required.

• Portable fire extinguishers are required.

• All plumbing lines containing water for cooling purposes will have the proper backflow preventers installed and registered with the State of Wisconsin.

Wodrich told the CDA/IRC that the new cooling towers are the first of two phases of improvements slated for Charter’s Saukville facility, noting that the company will be coming back to the village for permission to replace the plant’s original scale settling tanks with new concrete tanks offering more settling area, along with a filter building addition.

Work on the second phase, he said, is expected to take place next year.  

An integrated steelmaker specializing in steel melting, bar and rod rolling, coil processing and wire drawing, Charter Steel is a leading American supplier of carbon and alloy steel bar and rod and wire products, with distribution and manufacturing facilities in Wisconsin and Ohio.

Charter Steel is a division of Mequon-based metals firm Charter Manufacturing Co., Inc., whose other divisions include Milwaukee-based Charter Wire and Charter Automotive, as well as Woodstock, Ill.-based Charter Dura-Bar.