Excavation for the $700M Lake Mead Intake No. 3 Project was put on hold after tunneling encountered a fault carrying groundwater that flooded the excavation and submerged equipment. The flooding occurred over about 4-days, so there were no injuries reported. The Southern Nevada Water Authority ‘Third Straw’ project will secure the Lake Mead water supply for thirsty Las Vegas in the face of declining lake levels. The contractor will drill into the fault and grout it so the water can be pumped out and work can proceed. Check out this interesting SNWA project overview video for the ‘Third Straw’ project. [Source: Las Vegas Sun via ASCE SmartBrief. Image: Southern Nevada Water Authority]
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[Updated November 17, 2009] A few new posts from Ontario-geofish [/Updated]
Those with interest in rock mechanics and tunneling might be interested in this project. The Ontario Power Generation (OPG) company is the owner of a $600M (Canadian) construction project to create a third hydro power tunnel under Niagara Falls. Apparently the project is having all kinds of problems with overbreak in some very difficult tunneling conditions which means very slow progress and big $$ overruns. (Photo from niagarafrontier.com)
I’ve been meaning to post something on this project for some time. I admit that my perspective is biased by the viewpoint you can find on the Ontario-geofish blog. I’ve mentioned Harold Asmis before, he’s the owner of the OG blog, and a former OPG employee if I understand correctly. He left OPG for a career doing geophysics and earthquake engineering for the Nuclear Power industry in Canada. I highly recommend his blog, he has great insight into tunneling, earthquakes, siting of nuclear power plants not to mention opinions on all kinds of other things. His writing style is very colorful and entertaining as well.
So, Harold has written a whole series of blog posts on the Niagra Tunnel project, including a 5-part series entitled "The Disaster of the Niagara Tunnel" and a 4-part series called "Niagara Tunnel: doing it Right". He is not directly involved with the project, but his long career with OPG and related disciplines gives him some great insights. I’ve collected a list of some of his blog posts on the Niagara Tunnel project as well as a few other links about the project. Click through for the good stuff.