By 11 January 2000, Dukelabs completed the basic mapping of the Queens Tunnel and the final phase of on-site investigations wound down in March with a thorough sampling effort. Taking almost as long as the tunneling project itself, this enormous cartographic and geotechnical effort began in May 1998 with final reports submitted in late October 2000.  Dukelabs hard rock geologist CM is pictured below at the hole-through position of the TBM (beneath Long Island City).  Behind him is the "deflowered" and segmented outer cutterhead ring and cutter saddles minus the cutters (see image below of TBM for comparison).  Although barely visible, the "dropped front end" of the TBM looms behind the work platform.  Over the past 1.5+ years we have mapped 25,000 of TBM-mined tunnel at 1" to 10' which has generated 250 individually hand-drafted and digitally scanned map sheets.  Plans are afoot to publish the flat maps rerolled into cylindrical format and joined continuously together.  We plan an on-line virtual journey or walk-through of the tunnel with digital image "outcrops" for view along the way.  Petrographic imaging and geochemical data will also be presented in the virtual tunnel.

Many are unawares of the fact that in latest October 1999, the 5-mile long excavation of the Queens Tunnel was completed. The subsurface mining was accomplished by a 23' wide and ~300' long tunnel boring machine (TBM).  The Robbins-Atlas-Copco High-Performance tunnel boring machine is the most powerful ever built.  Along with it's able crew of sandhogs, the TBM has, over the past three years, inched it's way from Maspeth northeastward to Woodside thence northwestward to Long Island City.  This massive municipal construction effort has produced a bored, raw rock tunnel through western Queens about 750' below the surface, a region not well-known in the Michelin travel brochures for it's surface out croppings.  What evil lurks in the age and significance of the Queens Tunnel terrane?  Indeed, the TBM has exposed a treasure trove of new scientific information concerning the evolution of the Appalachians.

    By January 2001, after removal of the TBM and general cleaning of the raw tunnel perimeter, a ~2' concrete lining was injected behind temporary curved metal forms.  After removal of the forms section-by-section, the result is a 20'-wide smooth-walled pressure tunnel for New York City water.  Once completed and activated, the Queens Tunnel will provide an important connecting link between the Brooklyn Tunnel (completed a few years ago) and an existing tunnel and Shaft (16B, completed in the mid-1980s) that are positioned just east of the East River.  After the Queens Tunnel is lined with reinforced concrete and the piping, manifolds, and valves for the distribution shafts are completed, water (and higher pressure) will be added to the NYC water supply from Water Tunnel #3. Time to get into the Emergency Plumbing business - remember you heard it here first!