Water Sector News
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MASSIVE ALEXANDRIA TUNNEL MACHINE TO SAVE POTOMAC FROM SEWAGE PROBLEMS
The circular face of a 380-ton machine looked a little too clean for the work it was being commissioned to do on a hot July morning. Soon, its cheery-blue façade would be plunged 100 feet beneath the Earth’s surface, where the giant earthworm-shaped contraption will spend months eating its way through the dirt beneath the city of Alexandria, Va., leaving a water-holding tunnel in its wake.
The 2-mile tunnel will store polluted stormwater until it can be treated at Alexandria Renew Enterprises, or AlexRenew, the water treatment plant that’s taken on the $615 million project. The effort, which should be completed by mid-2025, will prevent millions of gallons of sewage-tainted overflows from entering the Potomac River and its tributaries.
“I’ll tell you one thing, people understand sewage,” Nancy Stoner, president of the Potomac Riverkeeper Network, said at an event christening the tunnel-boring machine into action. “They know they don’t want it in their water and they don’t want to go swimming in it. The investment is worth it.”