Deep Rock Tunnel ready to protect our rivers

Today, a crowd of neighborhood representatives, river enthusiasts, and City Utilities’ staff members joined Mayor Sharon Tucker to cut the ribbon celebrating the culmination of the Deep Rock Tunnel’s construction and its operational inauguration.

Photos and video from the ribbon cutting may be found here.

News release from Fort Wayne City Utilities:

Deep Rock Tunnel Ready to Protect Our Rivers
Celebrating the Largest Infrastructure Project in Fort Wayne’s History

Fort Wayne, Indiana (November 14, 2024) — A crowd of neighborhood representatives, river enthusiasts, and City Utilities’ staff members joined Mayor Sharon Tucker to cut the ribbon celebrating the culmination of the Deep Rock Tunnel’s construction and its operational inauguration. The massive project symbolizes Fort Wayne’s enduring bond with its waterways and the community’s commitment to protecting them, its neighborhoods, and its residents.

Dug by MamaJo, the Tunnel Boring Machine, the nearly five-mile-long underground pathway features a 16-foot pipe that will intercept combined sewage, namely sewage
mixed with stormwater.

Historically, combined sewage overflowed an average of 72 times a year during rain events into the St. Marys and Maumee rivers. Technically named the Three Rivers Protection and Overflow Reduction Tunnel (3RPORT), the project will reduce that and now keep 900 million gallons of combined sewage out of the rivers.

“Fort Wayne has set a tremendous example of turning a challenge into an opportunity to improve the quality of our rivers and enhance the quality of life for our entire community,” said Mayor Tucker. “City Utilities along with our residents and neighborhoods came together to develop a solution that makes our city a better steward of the environment and a place where businesses, individuals, and families want to invest in for a better future.”

MamaJo finished digging the tunnel in June of 2021. Since then, connecting passages, drop shafts, consolidation sewers, diversion structures, and an up-flow and pump shaft were constructed to connect neighborhoods along the Maumee and St. Marys and operationalize the tunnel.

At 220 feet below the earth’s surface and nearly five miles in length, the project will serve the community well into the 22nd Century. It is the largest public project in the history of the city.

“Strengthening our neighborhoods is essential, and the tunnel will play a key role in improving river health and reducing basement backups,” said Kumar Menon, City Utilities’ Executive Director. “This project is transformative. These investments are fueling a ‘river renaissance’ that drives economic growth. The popularity of our rivers is evident, with hundreds of visitors, kayakers, boaters and river enthusiasts flocking to the water throughout the year. The tunnel has brought billions in investments from developers on both sides of the river. Our community is truly embracing our rivers.”

Combined Sewer Overflows (CS0s) pollute our rivers and damage water quality by increasing water bacteria levels. The tunnel will reduce those overflows by 94 percent each year — keeping almost 900 million gallons of combined sewage out of our rivers. It will protect 15,000 properties by reducing basement backups and neighborhood street flooding.

Today, the tunnel becomes fully operational in year 17 of our 18-year Long-Term Control Plan and Consent Decree. The Plan will wrap up next year. The tunnel operates from the northeast corner of Foster Park to Glasgow Avenue near the Maumee River. Work underway in the neighborhoods of Indian Village, Woodhurst, and along Hartman Road will connect to the drop shaft at Foster Park, where the tunnel is now in operation.

MamaJo bored through bedrock on a path under the Maumee River, the confluence of the three rivers, and then turned and followed the path of the St. Marys River to its endpoint at Foster Park.

“As the largest infrastructure project in our city’s history, this undertaking has been nothing short of an engineering marvel. It is already impacting our community. Renewed interest in river activity epitomizes the positive effect revitalized rivers can have on our quality of life,” said Matthew Wirtz, City Utilities’ Director of Engineering. “Thank you to our residents for their patience and support. We recognize the challenges it brought to our neighborhoods. Your understanding has been essential in achieving a monumental improvement that will enhance the health and vitality of our city’s waterways and neighborhoods for generations to come.”

The tunnel has a life expectancy of more than 100 years. With all of the connections, including the diversion facilities, adits, drop shafts, consolidation sewers, an up-flow and pump shaft, and connecting pipes, the project represents an investment of $400 million. More than 130 companies worked on this initiative, supporting nearly 11,000 construction-related jobs. The entire endeavor took seven years to complete.

 

Quick Facts:

• 24,519 feet (nearly 5 miles) of tunnel stretching from Glasgow Avenue to Foster Park.
• 14 million tons (28 billion pounds) of material mined.
• Fully operational, the tunnel will reduce combined sewer overflows by 94 percent.
• The best mining day was January 19th, 2021, with 115 feet constructed.
• The tunnel is 220 feet below the earth’s surface.
• The interior tunnel diameter is 16 feet.
• The tunnel make-up is 4,878 rings, each comprised of six one-foot-thick concrete segments.
• 850 million gallons of combined sewage can travel through the tunnel each day.
• MamaJo’s name comes from the first two letters from Fort Wayne’s three rivers: Ma from St. Marys, Ma from the Maumee, and Jo from the St. Joseph

 

Defined Terms:

• Combined Sewer – Sewer pipes designed to collect both sanitary wastewater and rain or snowmelt runoff. The pipe was state of the art when designed and
  was used in more than 700 cities.
• Combined Sewer Overflows (CSOs) – The combined sewer overflows into our rivers during wet weather events because it fills up to capacity. It works as it was designed to do and was accepted practice until the 1972 Clean Water Act was passed. This occurs an average of 72 times per year.
• Consolidation Sewer – A near-surface sewer that will be constructed to collect sewage from several existing sewers that will direct sewage to a drop shaft that connects to the deep rock tunnel.
• Drop Shaft – A four to eight feet diameter, vertical shaft that will provide the connection between near surface sewers and the tunnel, allowing wastewater to drop to the tunnel depth.
• Adit — A horizontal or nearly horizontal underground passageway that connects the drop shat to the tunnel.
• Diversion Structure — A structure designed to redirect water flow with a separate pathway, allowing for controlled management of the flow
• Pump Station — Stormwater pump stations help protect areas by pumping away large volumes of water, thereby reducing the occurrence of flooding.
• Consent Decree — the agreement between the United States Department and the City of Fort Wayne, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and the Indiana Department of Environmental Management (IDEM) for improving river water quality and reducing negative effects from Combined Sewer Overflow (CSO) events.
• Long-Term Control Plan (LTCP) – incorporated into the Consent Decree, the LTCP describes a water quality-based approach that will dramatically reduce the discharge of untreated CS0s, improve water quality in Fort Wayne’s CSO-impacted waterways. It is an 18-year plan for City Utilities with year 18 coming in 2025.

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