LCRA Power Plant Tour

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I arrived at the office on time, but Mr. Peel had phoned moments before to say he was in San Marcos and would be a bit late. While waiting, I took some photographs (with permission) of the blueprints of the power plant.
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More blueprints.
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More blueprints.
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More blueprints.
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More blueprints.
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More blueprints.
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More blueprints.
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Having grown tired of the blueprints, I took a picture of this round tuit.
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The office that I was waiting in.
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The tour began the moment Mr. Peel appeared. After more than 30 days of hot dry weather, the last few days have had considerable rainfall. The mud on the ground attests to this.
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Right at the front entrance. You know this is Texas because of the Lone Star above the door.
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My first glimpse inside after years of curiosity. The room on the right is to become a small store or beauty salon to serve the complex. I managed to catch Mr. Peel in this shot. The doorway ahead would have been our way in, but at the moment opens out onto a rather steep drop.
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Here's the room on the right.
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Outside the window of the room on the right.
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It's just some mystery hole in the wall.
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A better view of the room on the right.
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This is the room on the left. It was locked up and appears to be just for storage right now. I'm not sure what it is destined to become.
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Different angle of the room on the left. Interestingly, all of the original brickwork is going to be visible when the project is completed.
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Since the door that we would have taken to get inside was blocked off, we had to make our way around to the side. I took this shot of the LCRA sign.
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Going in to the side of the building. I'm not sure who that fellow is in front of us. On the way in, however, we met up with a fellow named Justin who helped us navigate around the site for the remainder of the tour.
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One of a few blurry pictures that I took.
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Another blurry picture.
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I wish I could share the sheer size of this structure, but the camera is very limiting in this regard. The floors are kind of confusing. This is the floor we came in on, but I believe it's the second floor. I think the level of the ground is different from one side of the building to the other.
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This is the ground floor. The ladder to the left is our way up to the second floor. Before going up, we are first going down.
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These are Mr. Peels legs going down the stairs. Right now the stairs are just a sheet metal structure that will eventually be filled in with concrete. We are going down to what I believe is the first floor.
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Here's the first floor and some of the new work that is being done. It is going to be absolutely stunning when it is completed.
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Somehow I failed to take a photo of the original stairs going down to the basement. Here we are below the Comal river at the area where the water was once pumped into the power plant. I'm not certain how all this plumbing worked. if I had to guess, I'd say that these lead straight to the intake.
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This is curious. It's right behind the previous photo. There obviously something going on beneath the floor here, but since it's all encased in concrete, it's hard to guess what. It could be that this is the first stop of the inlet from the river and it wraps around to feed those other pipes. At this point I'm really just guessing. I'll hopefully have an opportunity to do some more research.
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To the left of the three pipes is this valve. Not sure what it was for.
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Here's looking back at the three pipes and the big U assembly. If you're the sort of person who things that orbs in a photo are spirits or ghosts or whatever, here you go. Personally, I think it's just dust.
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