01/30/2026
Once upon a time in the ancient lands of 2007, the Alcoa Corporation struck a deal with the New York Power Authority for the continued supply of energy to fuel its centuries old aluminum smelter in the northern New York town of Massena. It was a major ordeal as the last contract was signed in 1955 with the construction of the St. Lawrence Seaway which included NYPA's first major power project, the Robert-Moses Hydro Powerhouse on the St. Lawrence River.
In fact Alcoa was a major contributing factor in the entire plan as they existed thanks to the construction of the Massena Power Canal by the St. Lawrence Power Company. There had been many meetings and drafts planned for expansion in Massena in the early 20th century, including the damming of the Long Sault Rapids for a new smelter operation that would have been located on Barnhart Island.
Either way, since 1955 the Robert Moses Dam had provided Alcoa's Massena Operations with power, and the contract was set to expire in 2013. So negotiations took place and by 2007 a formal deal was struck. Without going into deep research the deal was to keep roughly 900 jobs between their two smelting operations, Alcoa West and the former Reynolds Metals aka Alcoa East. It also included the 'modernization' of Alcoa East that included the construction of a brand new modern pot-line. In July of 2013 there was even a ground breaking ceremony held with the Lt. Gov and Chuck Schumer.
And that was pretty much the public saw or heard of it.
In 2014 Alcoa announced the permanent closure of Alcoa East, the former Reynolds Metals, citing the old pot-lines were not 'competitive' enough for the current market, etc etc. Reynolds Families knew the real reason. Soderberg.
In the early 20th century there was two different methods of creating the electric anodes used in aluminum pots, Soderberg and Prebake. Alcoa utilizes the Prebake method while the Reynolds Metals Corporation utilized Soderberg. The difference is that Prebake is a much cleaner process but creates a weaker aluminum, while the Soderberg was a filthy process but created a superior aluminum.
With the growing awareness of pollution in the 70s and 80s, the Reynolds Metals Corporation would have to invest over a billion dollars to engineer and build a fume control system for their Massena operations. They did it and after many problems it did work, but not within the guidelines of the EPA and NYS DEC.
Long story short Reynolds Metals aka Alcoa East was always set to close in 2014 because that is when their special permits from the EPA and DEC expired. Its also why Alcoa was going to build a new pot-line to keep that facility running.
There was a recent article about Data Centers which sparked this post, as someone in the comments made mention of this whole pot-line project, and I remembered that I had these pictures.
The pictures attached to this post are the blueprints for that pot-line, left behind with many other things when Alcoa officially leased the Alcoa East facility to a company named Coinmint that wanted to turn the former plant into a Bitcoin mining operation.
Fun fact. They did. Officially its called North Country Colocation Services Data Center and it has been in operation since 2018 and provides about 100 jobs to locals. I worked for the company for about a year and these blueprints were left up on a the wall in the mechanical building. So they did at least engineer the plan.
Thanks for reading.
