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62 years in the making: NYC's newest water tunnel nears the finish line
- ChickeNES 10mo agoWild to think this is the same project featured in the third Die Hard, which turned 30 this year.
- linksnapzz 10mo agoShould they ever reboot Die Hard; it'll need a sequence involving CA HSR infrastructure.
- wtvanhest 10mo agoDie Hard: The most expensive mile
- rayiner 10mo agoThey need to do a post-apocalyptic movie with a scene set in Fresno with unfinished CA HSR viaducts hulking in the background against a polluted orange sky.
- linksnapzz 10mo agoThe problem with post-apocalyptic films set in Fresno is that the local audience will be challenged to find things depicted that are different, nevermind worse.
- cogman10 10mo agoThe project started in 1954. A 70 year old project.
- mvkel 10mo agoDie Hard: The Way of Water
- jeffwask 10mo agoI was just going to ask is this the tunnel from Die Hard, so cool.
- Animats 10mo agoThey finally got Water Tunnel #3 close to completion? Work was stopped a decade or so ago, but apparently it was restarted.
- toomuchtodo 10mo agoStill a bit more to go. Hopefully they offer some tours of the final phase before it’s flooded and no longer accessible for decades. > The Bronx and Manhattan already receive water from it, and the final phase — extending service to Brooklyn and Queens — is expected to be completed by 2032.
- senordevnyc 10mo agoI live in NYC, and I'd love a tour like this. Are there other of these kinds of civil engineering tours out there?
- toomuchtodo 10mo agoThe one that made me think of this is Metropolitan Area Outer Underground Discharge Channel in Kasukabe, but I’m sure there are others. If you find a list of civil engineering tours available, please share! Tokyo Metropolitan Area Outer Underground Discharge Channe - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43816183 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43816183 - April 2025 (6 comments) Tokyo's Underground Discharge Channel - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19785044 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19785044 - May 2019 (40 comments) Tokyo Is Preparing for Floods ‘Beyond Anything We’ve Seen’ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15436943 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15436943 - October 2017 (210 comments)
- mmooss 10mo agoSo many questions ... which probably have been asked on prior HN threads ... I wonder why 800 feet underground: Is that necessary to pass beneath all other infrastructure (to prevent flooding it?)? Remain beneath waterline to create negative pressure and reduce leaking? ? Also, what is the general mathematical relationship between depth, rock pressure / weight, and energy required to drill? That is, what is the proportion of energy required to drill beneath 800 feet of material compared to drilling beneath 400 feet? ...
- 7thpower 10mo agoThose are… actually some very good questions.
- cogman10 10mo agoIt's a 60 mile long tunnel and in order for water to flow through it, you need either pumps or a downhill gradient. I'd guess the reason for the 800 ft is because the reservoir it'll draw from is near sea level.
- nuccy 10mo agoRivers (e.g. Mississipi) work with much smaller gradient of just 0.01% [1], while with your assumption it would be 0.25%, so 25x. Maybe instead it needs to pass under the rivers [2: cross-section] surrounding New-York, which may be much deeper, especially when it comes closer to the bay passing Queens and Brooklyn [2: map] 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mississippi_River https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mississippi_River 2. https://gordonsurbanmorphology.wordpress.com/2014/10/26/waterworks-manhattan/ https://gordonsurbanmorphology.wordpress.com/2014/10/26/wate...
- woodruffw 10mo agoThis piqued my interest, so I checked: Tunnel #3 passes under the Harlem River and then the East River, but the Harlem River is less than 30 feet deep for the most part and the East River is around 40 feet deep at the most. (The Army Corps of Engineers has great detailed depth surveys for most of NY's waterways[1].) Edit: There's also a higher-resolution render of the tunnel layout here[2]. [1]: https://www.nan.usace.army.mil/Missions/Navigation/Controlling-Depth-Reports/ https://www.nan.usace.army.mil/Missions/Navigation/Controlli... [2]: https://extapps.dec.ny.gov/docs/water_pdf/nycsystem.pdf https://extapps.dec.ny.gov/docs/water_pdf/nycsystem.pdf
- zhivota 10mo agoMy immediate thought is at what point does desalination tech + clean energy reach the crossover where building a 60 mile tunnel over 60 years not make sense? It feels like very soon, and coastal cities can stop relying on hinterland reservoirs for water.
- patmorgan23 10mo agoCapital vs operating is a big factor here. The tunnels operations & maintenance cost is probably far lower than a desalinization plant that could produce an equivalent volume of potable water.
- PLenz 10mo agoProbably never. The tunnels cost a lot to build but, once built run almost for free - they're powered by gravity and will keep running for close to a century before major maintained is needed.
- zhivota 10mo agoYeah that makes sense but if growth dictates another tunnel... And it takes another 60 years, your capital expense starts to look a lot like an operating expense. Not to mention one of the big stated purposes of this tunnel is actually to facilitate maintenance of the other tunnels. There is probably more operation cost hidden here than seems obvious.
- cguess 10mo agoThe big reason for tunnel 3 isn't new population growth, it's so that the other tunnels can be shut down for maintenance and inspection. NYC's population is more or less stable over the last 90 years.
- margalabargala 10mo agoClose to a century? There are Roman aqueducts in continuous operation for two millenia.
- aizk 10mo agoIt's amusing to me watching devs talk about the breakneck pace of AI and LLMS, AGI all that sorts of stuff, what that wild future will give us - when there are far, far more difficult problems that lie directly in front of us, mainly getting public infrastructure projects done in normal spans of time, or hell, getting them done at all.
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- pclmulqdq 10mo agoAGI is easier than getting New York City to complete an infrastructure project in less than a decade or less than a billion dollars. The corruption and graft run so deep you would have to literally murder a lot of people to get that to happen.
- aizk 10mo agoYes. That's exactly my point.
- rayiner 10mo agoWhy is NYC so corrupt when large cities like London, Munich, and even Paris are much less so?
- cyberax 10mo agoThey are just as corrupt and/or incompetent. Have you tried Deutsche Bahn recently?
- mmooss 10mo agoWhy do people say NYC is more corrupt? I don't know of evidence or reports. To me, it doesn't seem more or less corrupt than other major cities in the US. It's hard to compare to other countries, where city government may have different roles. Certainly NY's government and budget are larger than other US cities, for obvious reasons.
- toomuchtodo 10mo agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City_Water_Tunnel_No._3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City_Water_Tunnel_No.... https://www.nyc.gov/assets/dep/downloads/pdf/water/drinking-water/water-supply/nyc-water-supply-system.pdf https://www.nyc.gov/assets/dep/downloads/pdf/water/drinking-... https://old.reddit.com/r/nyc/comments/in5lm7/cross_section_showing_city_tunnel_no_3/ https://old.reddit.com/r/nyc/comments/in5lm7/cross_section_s... Potentially related: Discussing Waterworks, Stanley Greenberg's Photos of NY's Hidden Water System [video] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46416871 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46416871 - December 2025 (Tunnel 3 will deliver 1B gallons/day and has a 200-300 year expected service life)
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- sbuccini 10mo agoI recommend reading David Grann's excellent piece from 2003 on the New Yorkers building this tunnel: https://archive.ph/k45QP https://archive.ph/k45QP
- jmyeet 10mo agoIf you ever want to put the cost of something into context, remember that Mark Zuckerberg spent $77 billion on the Metaverse. I went looking for an article I read a decade ago about the challenges of supplying water to NYC and maintaining the aging infrastructure. Part of the "race" to build new capacity is so they can actually turn off some of this supply for extended periods to repair it. Millions of gallons of water leaks or is just unaccounted for every day. I didn't find it but this [1] kind of goes into it. And since you can't turn the water off (generally), you need to do repairs in fairly extreme environments and use materials that don't corrode over very long periods of time. IIRC some pump or valve infrastructure was made out of manganese bronze for this purpose. [1]: https://nysfocus.com/2024/11/27/new-york-water-leaks-drought https://nysfocus.com/2024/11/27/new-york-water-leaks-drought
- rangestransform 10mo agoMark's money is sucked up from the entire world, whereas NYC's money is picked from the pockets of NYC residents, obviously I'd prefer one over the other given I live in NYC
- xnx 10mo ago> remember that Mark Zuckerberg spent $77 billion on the Metaverse. I'll never be a billionaire, but I'll also never spend $77 billion with so little to show for it.
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- larusso 10mo agoIs that the same project shown in Die Hard 3? Where the truck driver enumerates the progress etc?