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About 8,000 miles away, in British Columbia, another M-K construction crew was finishing a far bigger job, a $173 million hydroelectric installation. It was MK's share of the $500 million Nechako-Kitimat project of the Aluminum Co. of Canada, probably the biggest construction job ever attempted by private capital. To supply power for a new aluminum smelter, M-K had dammed a river to form a 120-mile-long reservoir, hollowed out a mountain to enclose a huge powerhouse five city blocks long, and drilled a ten-mile tunnel to carry the water to the turbines...
...MK's part of the Alcan project was originally conceived as a $100 million job, with MK's fee pegged at $2,200,000-subject to a 50% cut if costs went beyond a certain limit. Costs have soared, and M-K may make less than $1,000,000 for its more than three, years' work in subzero temperatures and blinding blizzards that often buried camps under many feet of snow. The men are well aware that heavy construction is one of the most dangerous of all industries. To date, 48 men have been killed...
...mammoth Alcan project is a prime example of the Morrison method. When the preliminary survey work was done in February 1951, MK's No. 2 man, Jack Bonny, called a big, hearty Swede named Ole Strandberg who was vacationing in Honolulu. "Come on back," said Bonny. "We have a job for you-some dams and tunnels-the kind of stuff you like." Some "dams and tunnels," recalls Strandberg, turned out to be "a ten-mile tunnel, a 50-mile transmission line, the biggest underground powerhouse ever built...
...MK's first capital consisted of $600 in cash, a dozen wheelbarrows, a few horses, some picks and shovels. The company's first job-a $14,000 subcontract to build a pumping station on the Snake River-brought only a tiny profit. The prime contractor and the promoter got into a court fight, and M-K was caught in the middle. Morrison ruefully recalls: "You can't make money out of lawsuits...
...been a team, traveling the world together. In all that time, she has never missed a trip, has whirled over the Canadian mountains in helicopters, jounced over Afghan trails on a Bactrian camel. Ann Morrison was one of the last women to leave Wake Island before the Japanese attack (MK had been building an airfield). She has ordered supplies for camps, kept accounts, filled in at the cookhouse when the cook was drunk...