Workers inspect Sinclair smokestack

City officials continue to assess the future of the 180-foot-tall Sinclair plant smokestack, and inspectors were on site today to further assess the stack.

The City Council voted in May to hire a structural engineer to ascertain the structural integrity of the smokestack.

The immediate complication in saving the smokestack is trying to do so without stalling the demolition, which the Federal Emergency Management Agency is paying millions of dollars to do, but only because the agency has deemed the plant's buildings an “imminent threat” to public safety.

The city's Historic Preservation Commission is advocating that the smokestack be saved. FEMA has said that between $150,000 and up to $200,000 in FEMA historic preservation funds will be available for the smokestack project, which, by current estimates, could cost between $115,250 and $508,757 to stabilize and, perhaps, as much as $690,000, by one estimate, to both stabilize and restore.