Port Mann water main tunnel completed
Posted July 21, 2015 11:17 pm.
Last Updated July 21, 2015 11:28 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – There’s a new tunnel under the Port Mann Bridge, but you can’t drive through it. A major stage in Metro Vancouver’s project to double the capacity of water to Surrey is now complete.
Chair of Metro Vancouver Greg Moore says the tunnel boring work 30 meters below the Fraser River bed through bed rock is done. Crews had to dig roughly 100 meters down at one end and drop a massive tunnel boring machine called ‘Squirrel.’
“Then we bored straight underneath and across the Fraser and then we pop up on the Coquitlam side again with another hole that goes straight down,” says Moore.
“Unlike a tunnel that most people would be used to where you drive your car through or the SkyTrain goes through and it’s a nice gradual approach, we actually go straight down and another 90 degree and go straight under and then a 90 degree go back up the other side.”
He says now they have to link the tunnel to the existing water system and install an earthquake proof water main.
The $240 million project is expected to be finished next year.
