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Read about Chicago’s Tunnel and Reservoir plan. It’s a 60 year underground water infrastructure plan that’s been miraculously more or less on schedule and budg

• OldHand2018 8y ago
  The Chicago system is about 2 orders of magnitude larger (someone might want to check my pre-coffee morning math), but a very big distinction is that Chicago stores the overflow water in outdoor, open-air reservoirs, not underground storage tanks. I agree that it is rather impressive for a long-running American construction project to be on-time and on-budget, but keep in mind that most of the project has been tunneling through very consistent bedrock with nothing in the way. Also, the McCook Reservoir mentioned in the wikipedia article as 13x10^9 liters is a former limestone quarry that they purchased and then connected to the system. The wikipedia article says it will be expanded to 38x10^9 liters by 2029. That's true... but what is really going on is that all they've done is sign a contract to buy the quarry on the other side of the highway once the stone company is done with it, perhaps around 2026 or so. Only then will they do any construction to connect it to the system. Don't get me wrong, it's a very smart move. But it's not an 11-year long project for which they have to maintain a schedule and budget.