CLEVELAND — When you think of the most expensive infrastructure projects in Northeast Ohio history, the recent construction of the two inner belt bridges might come to mind. But those two bridges, constructed between 2011 and 2018, are combined less than a third of the cost of another 25-year project, and unlike a bridge, highway or stadium, this is one few will ever see. It's called Project Clean Lake, and it involves the construction of seven large-scale storage tunnels ranging from two to five miles in length, up to 300 feet underground and up to 24 feet in diameter.
Their purpose is to hold untreated water and sewage during heavy rain that otherwise would have flowed untreated into Lake Erie. You see, Cleveland is one of 800 cities across the country that have combined sewers where the sewage from your home travels in the same pipe as the stormwater from your street, and it goes to a wastewater plant where it's treated and released into Lake Erie. Well, during heavy rains, the pipes and the plants can't handle the volume causing untreated water and sewage to be cast into the lake.
Back in the early 70s, nearly nine billion gallons of this untreated water was released into the lake each year; that's been cut down to about four billion. Project Clean Lake will get that to under a half billion by storing the dirty water in these tunnels until after the storm passes, when it can be pumped out, treated and released.
News 5 is getting an update on the progress of the effort Monday ahead of United for Infrastructure Week, May 15-19, with a stop at the Shoreline Storage Tunnel just south of Shoreway and West of Eddy Road in Cleveland. A walk down a dozen or so flights of steps in the massive shaft puts you at the eastern edge of the tunnel that stretches from Forest Hills Park at East 110th Street to East 55th Street just south of South Marginal Road.
"This project itself will save 350 million gallons of CSO going into the lake, so it's a really crucial project in the big Project Clean Lake Program," said Jessica Shutty of the Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District.
Ian Danielson, an engineer with Delve Underground, took us several hundred yards into the tunnel to the spot where one massive piece of machinery was carving out the 23 foot in diameter tunnel six feet at a time while another puts in place these huge 17,000-pound slabs that would make up the walls.
"Once they're offloaded onto the machine, they're placed on this feeder table, and it basically slides and moves the segments forward," said Danielson. A vacuum plate does the heavy lifting; it takes six to complete the full circle. "It'll pick the segment or the stone up, and then they'll rotate it into place, and once they have all six segments installed, that's the complete ring they'll get back to mining and advance another six feet."
This is the fifth of seven tunnels being built as part of a Federal mandate; as such, the $3 billion tab is entirely ratepayer-funded by you. The good news is that over the first half of these projects, they've realized just over a half billion dollars in savings. This tunnel is set to be up and running by December 2025.
