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-We're swimming in the water.
We're paddle boarding on the water.
We're boating on the water.
And coming in contact with the water,
it's important for it to be healthy.
But there are times where, like in a heavy rain event,
it's too much water to handle.
And so when that happens,
it ends up overflowing into the ship canal.
Almost half of the amount of combined sewer overflows
that enter our local waterways
and all of Seattle are occurring in the ship canal.
-It's not the treatment plant that's a problem.
It's actually just there's just too much water in the tunnels
and the collection pipes.
And basically this is a historical problem
from 100 years ago when there was no treatment.
So all these overflow locations,
they discharged the sewage
and everything right into the water bodies.
We're going to remove about 75 million gallons
of this sewage and storm water
from the ship canal every year by storing it in the tunnel,
then draining the tunnel with a pump station
to the West Point Treatment Plant.
And I do have to clarify
when people hear I'm working on a tunnel,
they instantly think about traffic,
that we're building a tunnel
to improve traffic from Ballard to Wallingford.
So it's actually a water tunnel.
The name of our tunnel boring machine is Mud Honey.
And so many people know
that Mud Honey is a grunge band from the Seattle area.
We lowered Mud Honey into the Ballard shaft
in the spring of 2021.
It's a really huge machine.
If you put all the pieces together it would be
nearly as long as seven semi-trucks put back to back.
The machine was made in Germany
and it's an international crew that operates it from countries
from all over the world.
-Well, there is people that can speak multiple languages.
50% coming from Latin countries.
-Maybe six years ago I started at Mexico.
So I start there this kind of tunnel with a soft material.
-This is my first time on tunnel like this size
and it's amazing.
I'm happy to be a part of this project.
-This is already the third year they're working together.
So there is a very,
very beautiful coordination between them.
Also, the help of people that can speak multiple languages
can always put everything in common.
-Everything has to work in sequence.
There's three trains running down the tunnel.
They're working about 24 hours a day, 6 days a week.
This is not a high speed rail line.
Yes, it is bumpy. It's really loud.
And I think it's important to note that this is the commute.
There's about 15 people up at the machine
and this is how they commute to work every day.
They commute there and they commute out.
-Follow me. So now we can go straight.
Follow me.
-Every tunnel is a new adventure,
you know, it's never the same.
I'm operating the tunnel boring machine.
As you can see, the mud's coming out real quick.
We're mining at almost three inches a minute.
You know, you got to counteract.
You got to put positive pressure,
but at the same time, not too much.
-He's mining.
The soil is coming up over the top on a conveyor belt,
and then it's dropping in where you saw that guy back there.
What we're mining through is essentially a soil
that was deposited and then run over by the last glacier
about 15,000 years ago.
So we're running through very hard compressed soil.
When he stops mining, he's done for 30 minutes.
Then we're going to see very quickly these guys or gals
trying to set those liners in to build the tunnel.
To build about five feet of tunnel
generally takes about 30 minutes if all goes well.
Parts of the tunnel are underneath the roadways.
Parts of our underground structures
will be under the Burke-Gilman Trail.
People have no idea what's underneath there
and that's part of the whole realm of utilities.
If you look at utilities, you don't see them.
Yeah.
What we're looking at here is Mud Honey,
our tunnel boring machine for the storage tunnel.
We're super excited about this.
After a 22 month journey from Ballard,
the machine cored into the side here right on the mark,
right into our Wallingford shaft.
So we're now finished with our storage tunnel.
But the machine, you know, looks like it's been through a lot.
It has.
The red stripe is all the paint that's left from Mud Honey
when the machine started back 22 months ago.
We're basically going to be recycling most of the machine.
The contractor will basically take most of the cutter head
and kind of the steel piece that you see here off.
Inside are lots of different pumps, an operator's room.
Those will all be lifted out
and actually sent back to the manufacturer in Germany
to be refurbished and to use on another project.
And then actually most of the hard metal
that you see here will actually be melted down locally
and reused for other purposes.
We did all this work during COVID.
We did it as a team.
We have a great contract with the Lane Construction Company
who's been great to work with.
It's been really amazing to see everyone working together.
When we're working at these shafts,
we're here for years
and we really appreciate people's patience.
-The benefits that we'll see from this project
are going to be long-lasting.
It's something that's being built to last
at least the next 50 years.
Environmental stewardship is really important
to Seattle Public Utilities,
so we want to improve the environmental health
in our communities
so that way our communities can thrive
and enjoy this resource now and into the future.
-You always want to try to make a difference.
And when you think about you're working on a project
that will remove 75 million gallons of sewage and
storm water, that's something to be proud of.
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