A giant boring machine plunged through a wall of rock 180 feet underground on Wednesday, completing 26 years of burrowing beneath the Chicago area to make the 109-mile Deep Tunnel system.
The underground network is part of the $3 billion Tunnel and Reservoir Plan aimed at protecting the Chicago area from flooding and water pollution caused by storm-water runoff. About 101 miles of tunnels making up about 1.6 billion gallons worth of volume are in operation now.
The tunnels, which will feed into storage reservoirs, won’t be totally complete until 2006, but the actual digging wrapped up on Wednesday in Dixmoor.
About 25 people gathered in a dank cavern at the bottom of long shaft to see the 3,300 horsepower machine come ripping through the dolomite limestone that runs beneath Cook County and finish off the last major tunnel in an epic engineering project.
Before the tunnels were created, storms easily overwhelmed the sewer systems of the area, forcing water reclamation plants to dump the excess, sewage and all, into local waterways, namely the Chicago River.
———-
Compiled from RedEye news services
