Water Tunnels Emerging In Queens

The underground rumblings you hear are the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) crews putting the finishing touches on a huge five-mile long water tunnel between Page Place in Maspeth, to the northern tip of Roosevelt Island, via Astoria.
The 50-year, citywide project is the largest public works project that the city has undertaken, according to Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
Launched in 1970 as part of a $7 billion water supply program, the Queens installation will eventually become an integral part of a new citywide 60 mile water system by 2020. Water will begin to flow into Queens from the reservoirs in 2007.
Stretching between Hillview Reservoir in Westchester and the farthest recesses of Queens, it will provide city engineers with an alternate water source. This will permit DEP engineers to make structural inspections and correct the leaks and flaws in the two older water tunnels that were built as early as 1917. The new tunnel will deliver 1.3 billion gallons of water per day.
Aided by a giant mechanical borer used in the construction of the English Channel tunnel, city sandhogs are constructing a 20-foot water tunnel that will link the Brooklyn and Queens tunnels with the Manhattan lines that lie as much as 80 feet below Roosevelt Island.
The 450-ton borer drills a hole through solid granite at the rate of 55 to 75 feet per day and eliminates the dangerous necessity of underground blasting. Work is accomplished slowly because each foot of stone that is drilled yields 15 tons of crushed rock that has to be transported 600 feet up to the surface by a conveyer belt and then trucked away.
Three more tunnels have to be dug before the new system is completed in 2020: one in lower Manhattan, a second to the Kensico Reservoir, and a third to sections of the Bronx and eastern Queens.