New York City Water Tunnel No. 3 is a
water-supply tunnel forming part of the
New York City water supply system
A combination of aqueducts, reservoirs, and tunnels supplies fresh water to New York City. With three major water systems ( Croton, Catskill, and Delaware) stretching up to away from the city, its water supply system is one of the most extens ...
. It is being built by the
New York City Department of Environmental Protection
The New York City Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) is the department of the government of New York City that manages the city's water supply and works to reduce air, noise, and hazardous materials pollution.
Under a 1.3 billion do ...
to provide New York City with a third connection to its
upstate water supply.
Water Tunnel No. 3 is the largest capital construction project in New York City history.
The tunnel will be more than long, travel below street level in sections, and will cost over $6 billion. Construction began in 1970 and is expected to not be completed until at least 2026.
The tunnel will serve as a backup to
Water Tunnel No. 1, completed in 1917, and
Water Tunnel No. 2, completed in 1936.
[
]
Stages
One
The project was authorized in 1954 and imagined as "the greatest nondefense construction project in the history of Western Civilization". The city determined that it needed a third water tunnel so that Tunnels 1 and 2 could be closed for inspection and repairs. Stage One construction of Tunnel 3 began in 1970 and completed in 1993. This portion was put into service in 1998 and cost about $1 billion.
This first section was bored through bedrock between underground, using drilling and blasting techniques. Section one is long and starts at Hillview Reservoir
The Hillview Reservoir is a storage reservoir in southeastern Yonkers, New York. It was built within a six-year period from 1909–1915 by the New York City Board of Water Supply to receive water from the newly constructed Catskill Aqueduct, w ...
in Yonkers, New York
Yonkers () is a city in Westchester County, New York, United States. Developed along the Hudson River, it is the third most populous city in the state of New York, after New York City and Buffalo. The population of Yonkers was 211,569 as enu ...
then crosses under Central Park
Central Park is an urban park in New York City located between the Upper West Side, Upper West and Upper East Sides of Manhattan. It is the List of New York City parks, fifth-largest park in the city, covering . It is the most visited urban par ...
in Manhattan
Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...
, to reach Fifth Avenue
Fifth Avenue is a major and prominent thoroughfare in the borough of Manhattan in New York City. It stretches north from Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village to West 143rd Street in Harlem. It is one of the most expensive shopping stre ...
at 78th Street. From there it runs under the East River
The East River is a saltwater tidal estuary in New York City. The waterway, which is actually not a river despite its name, connects Upper New York Bay on its south end to Long Island Sound on its north end. It separates the borough of Queens ...
and Roosevelt Island
Roosevelt Island is an island in New York City's East River, within the borough of Manhattan. It lies between Manhattan Island to the west, and the borough of Queens, on Long Island, to the east. Running from the equivalent of East 46th to 85 ...
into Astoria, Queens
Astoria is a neighborhood in the western portion of the New York City borough of Queens. Astoria is bounded by the East River and is adjacent to three other Queens neighborhoods: Long Island City to the southwest, Sunnyside to the southeast ...
. It is a concrete-lined tunnel that is in diameter and reduces to in diameter before connecting to 14 vertical shafts.
Two
Stage Two was built using tunnel boring machine
A tunnel boring machine (TBM), also known as a "mole", is a machine used to excavate tunnels with a circular cross section through a variety of soil and rock strata. They may also be used for microtunneling. They can be designed to bore throu ...
s and comprises two sections. The Brooklyn
Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...
and Queens
Queens is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Queens County, in the U.S. state of New York. Located on Long Island, it is the largest New York City borough by area. It is bordered by the borough of Brooklyn at the western tip of Long ...
section runs and begins in Red Hook, Brooklyn
Red Hook is a neighborhood in northwestern Brooklyn, New York City, New York, within the area once known as South Brooklyn. It is located on a peninsula projecting into the Upper New York Bay and is bounded by the Gowanus Expressway and the Car ...
, where it connects to the Richmond Tunnel for Staten Island
Staten Island ( ) is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Richmond County, in the U.S. state of New York. Located in the city's southwest portion, the borough is separated from New Jersey by the Arthur Kill and the Kill Van Kull an ...
. It passes through Park Slope
Park Slope is a neighborhood in northwestern Brooklyn, New York City, within the area once known as South Brooklyn. Park Slope is roughly bounded by Prospect Park and Prospect Park West to the east, Fourth Avenue to the west, Flatbush Aven ...
, Bedford-Stuyvesant, and Bushwick
Bushwick is a neighborhood in the northern part of the New York City borough of Brooklyn. It is bounded by the neighborhood of Ridgewood, Queens, to the northeast; Williamsburg to the northwest; East New York and the cemeteries of Highland Par ...
before reaching Maspeth, Queens
Maspeth is a residential and commercial community in the borough of Queens in New York City. It was founded in the early 17th century by Dutch and English settlers. Neighborhoods sharing borders with Maspeth are Woodside to the north; Sunnyside ...
. From Maspeth it runs through Woodside and Astoria, where it connects to the end of the Stage One section. The Brooklyn section is in diameter, and the Queens section is .[water-technology.net ]
The Manhattan section is in diameter and runs for . It begins at a valve chamber
A valve is a device or natural object that regulates, directs or controls the flow of a fluid (gases, liquids, fluidized solids, or slurries) by opening, closing, or partially obstructing various passageways. Valves are technically fittings ...
in Central Park, runs south along the west side of Manhattan, and curves around the southern end of the island to come partway through the Lower East Side. A spur of the Manhattan tunnel begins on the west side at approximately 34th Street, goes to the east side and then turns north under Second Avenue to about 59th Street. The tunnel itself was completed in 2008, and after the construction of riser shaft
Riser may refer to: Engineering
* Stair riser, the vertical elements in a set of stairs
* Riser, another name for a theatre platform
* Riser, a length of vertically oriented piping used to deliver fluid, gas, or electrical signals or power upward
...
s was completed, the tunnel opened in 2013.
Three
What used to be called Stage Three is now being referred to as a separate project, the "Kensico–City Tunnel". It will be in diameter, running from the Kensico Reservoir
The Kensico Reservoir is a reservoir spanning the towns of Armonk ( North Castle) and Valhalla ( Mount Pleasant), New York, located 3 miles (5 km) north of White Plains. It was formed by the original earth and gravel Kensico Dam constructed in 18 ...
in Westchester to the Van Cortlandt Valve Chamber complex in the Bronx.
Four
Stage Four is a proposed tunnel that would start at the Hillview Reservoir
The Hillview Reservoir is a storage reservoir in southeastern Yonkers, New York. It was built within a six-year period from 1909–1915 by the New York City Board of Water Supply to receive water from the newly constructed Catskill Aqueduct, w ...
, pass through the eastern Bronx and then through Queens, where it would eventually meet the Stage Two section.
Valve chambers
The largest valve chamber is in Van Cortlandt Park
Van Cortlandt Park is a park located in the borough of the Bronx in New York City. Owned by the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation, it is managed with assistance from the Van Cortlandt Park Alliance. The park, the city's third-lar ...
. It is built below the park surface. It controls the flow of water from the city's Catskill and Delaware
Delaware ( ) is a state in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States, bordering Maryland to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; and New Jersey and the Atlantic Ocean to its east. The state takes its name from the adjacent Del ...
systems. These systems provide 90 percent of the city's current drinking water. The Van Cortlandt Park Valve Chamber is long, wide and high. The complex has nine vertical shafts; and two manifolds
In mathematics, a manifold is a topological space that locally resembles Euclidean space near each point. More precisely, an n-dimensional manifold, or ''n-manifold'' for short, is a topological space with the property that each point has a Ne ...
. Each manifold is long and in diameter and is currently in operation.
Additional, though smaller, valve chambers are in use under Central Park at 79th Street, under Roosevelt Island, and in Jackson Heights.
Deaths
Since 1970, when construction on the tunnel began, twenty-four people have died in construction-related accidents. The deaths have included twenty-three workers and a 12-year-old boy, Don-re Carroll, who died while exploring uncapped water pipes in the Bronx
The Bronx () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Bronx County, in the state of New York. It is south of Westchester County; north and east of the New York City borough of Manhattan, across the Harlem River; and north of the New Y ...
.[ No deaths have occurred since 1997.]
Progress
In 2002, New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg
Michael Rubens Bloomberg (born February 14, 1942) is an American businessman, politician, philanthropist, and author. He is the majority owner, co-founder and CEO of Bloomberg L.P. He was Mayor of New York City from 2002 to 2013, and was a ca ...
made completion of the tunnel a priority, and set a goal date of 2021. Commissioner Christopher O. Ward
Christopher Owen Ward (born 1954) is an American civil servant who served as executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey from May 22, 2008, until November 1, 2011, and as New York City Department of Environmental Protecti ...
helped move this project along for the Mayor. A ''New York Times'' report in 2016 stated that mayor Bill de Blasio
Bill de Blasio (; born Warren Wilhelm Jr., May 8, 1961; later Warren de Blasio-Wilhelm) is an American politician who served as the 109th mayor of New York City from 2014 to 2021. A member of the Democratic Party, he held the office of New Yor ...
was postponing completion of the project indefinitely, but he subsequently stated that this was a miscommunication between his press office and the ''Times'', and that the completion date was actually being pushed up to 2020.
In popular culture
* Scenes from the 1995 film ''Die Hard with a Vengeance
''Die Hard with a Vengeance'' is a 1995 American action thriller film directed by John McTiernan (who directed the first installment). It was written by Jonathan Hensleigh, based on the screenplay ''Simon Says'' by Hensleigh and on the chara ...
'' were filmed in Tunnel No. 3.
* ''Payback'', a 1997 novel by Thomas Kelly, includes "the twenty-three men who have died building New York City Water Tunnel Number Three" among those to whom it is dedicated. Billy Adare, one of the principal characters, is a sandhog
Sandhog is the slang term given to urban miners and construction workers who work underground on a variety of excavation projects in New York City, and later other cities. Generally these projects involve tunneling, caisson excavation, road buil ...
working on the tunnel whose father was killed in the early stages of its construction. ''Payback'' was re-released in 2008 with the new title ''Sandhogs''.
* The ''CSI: NY
''CSI: NY'' (''Crime Scene Investigation: New York'', stylized as ''CSI: NY/Crime Scene Investigation'') is an American police procedural television series that ran on CBS from September 22, 2004, to February 22, 2013, for a total of nine seaso ...
'' episode "A Man a Mile" deals with the death of a sandhog during construction of Water Tunnel No. 3.
* In Spider Robinson
Spider Robinson (born November 24, 1948) is an American-born Canadian science fiction author. He has won a number of awards for his hard science fiction and humorous stories, including the Hugo Award 1977 and 1983, and another Hugo with his co-a ...
's novel ''Night of Power
The Qadr Night or Laylat al-Qadr ( ar, لیلة القدر), variously rendered in English as the Night of Decree, Night of Power, Night of Value, Night of Destiny, or Night of Measures, is, in Islamic belief, the night when the Quran was firs ...
'', Tunnel No. 3 is depicted as an abandoned project, taken over as the secret headquarters for a revolutionary movement.
* In Linda Fairstein
Linda Fairstein (born May 5, 1947) is an American author, attorney, and former New York City prosecutor focusing on crimes of violence against women and children. She was the head of the sex crimes unit of the Manhattan District Attorney's offi ...
's 2007 novel ''Bad Blood'', Tunnel No. 3 deals with the interconnection between a homicide case and the sandhogs working in Tunnel No. 3 and other NYC tunnels for generations.
* The ''Nova
A nova (plural novae or novas) is a transient astronomical event that causes the sudden appearance of a bright, apparently "new" star (hence the name "nova", which is Latin for "new") that slowly fades over weeks or months. Causes of the dramati ...
'' episode "The Hidden City" (October 3, 1989) included a segment on the construction of the tunnel.
* Scenes of the final episode of season 4 of ''The Strain
''The Strain'' is a 2009 vampire horror novel by Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan. It is the first installment in ''The Strain Trilogy'', and was followed by '' The Fall'' (2010) and ''The Night Eternal'' (2011).
Plot synopsis
A Boeing 77 ...
'' were filmed in Tunnel No. 3.
* In Emily St. John Mandel
Emily St. John Mandel (; born 1979) is a Canadian novelist and essayist. She has written six novels, including '' Station Eleven'' (2014) and '' The Glass Hotel'' (2020). ''Station Eleven'', which has been translated into 33 languages, has been ...
’s 2010 novel ''The Singer’s Gun'', Anton Walker is head of a small research division at an international water systems consulting firm. He was tasked with creating recommendations for providing NYC residents with drinking water in the event of catastrophic failure of Tunnel No. 1 or 2 before the completion of Tunnel No. 3.
References
External links
* John H. Betts
The Minerals of New York City
' originally published in Rocks & Minerals magazine, Volume 84, No. 3, pp. 204–252 (2009).
{{DEFAULTSORT:New York City Water Tunnel No. 3
Water infrastructure of New York City
Tunnels in New York City
Water tunnels in the United States