New LED lighting for Du Quoin water tower

A brighter, more cost efficient Du Quoin comes at a price. The photographer following David & Jane McIntire and Seth Flint of McIntire Electric gets weak in the knees every now and then just looking up to watch.

Case-in-point was Tuesday's retrofitting of the Du Quoin water tower with new LED lighting. Electrician Seth Flint scaled one leg of the hundred-and-something foot tall water tower to install the six new LED light consoles that light the tower and make in visible to aircraft. It took a little engineering, as well. The original lights were installed on struts which extended out and away from the tower. You could loosen the bolts and slide the struts in and out to change lamps. A few years ago when the tower was refurbished, sandblasted and repainted workers for some unknown reason welded those sliding arms to the mounts making a light change impossible.

Flint had to put the new LED lighting on new mounts. The brighter, more cost-effective light consoles have a life expectancy of 10 or more years.

How high up was he? Flint radioed the McIntires down below and said he could see the Mount Vernon and Cutler water towers from where he was.

The city's lighting project, 90% of it paid for through grant programs, as well as other city initiatives, will be talked about in next month's annual Progress Edition.