The Birmingham age-herald., 1912-01-28
COMPLETE TUNNEL UNDER THE HUDSON AT NOON TUESDAY Greatest Link in Greatest Chain of Its Kind in
 the World
OFFICIALS TO HAVE
 BIG CELEBRATION
Boring of Tunnel Has Been Rushed at the Rate of IT Feet Day During the Last Few Weeks-Squads
 Work Night and Day

in the worlds history will be com pleted precisely at noon next Tues day. when blast of dynamite, fired ilOo feet under the surface of the Hudson river at storm King. N. Y, concludes the digging of a tunnel through which in years to come will pour millions of gallons of water from the Catsllill mountains for consumption by the city of New York; more than 100 miles distant
 Mayor Gaynor and members of the board of water supply will be present to official ly celebrate the event, and as soon as the debris of the blast is cleared away they will walk through the 5000 feet length of the tunnel from shore to shore
 Colossal Waterworks The successful completion of the under the river tunnel marks the scheme Tor which New York city will spend s162,ooo,- GOO before work ceases on it. The con- structing of the great AshoNan dam ana reservoir. with an area greater than Man haitian island itself; the building of the 100 miles of serpent like aqueduct, with us half dozen sub-reservoirs, and the laying 1 of miles upon miles of tributary plplns under the city itself are problems to tax the ingenuity and resources of the great est of engineers and constructors, but none of these tasks was as baffling or doubtful of consummation as the boring
 under the Hudson.
 1 Until work on the great under the rlVer tunnel had progressed almost to it's con- clusion the question still remained as to
 whether the more than $500, ,00O00O voted by the city to be expended on the prodigious
 project would be wasted. Therefore, the completion of it marks the most important occasion since work was started in 19Of. Official ceremonies commemorated the | turning of the first spade full of earth. Tuesdays exercises glory over the fact that instead of mere possibility the project is HOW certainty and its com pletion only a. question of time. The only other celebration to be held will be when the water Is turned on to supply billions of gallons of clear mountain liquid to the inhabitants of Americas metropolis This is expected to be in 1913.
 The official opening of the great tunnel on Tuesday will be attended, besides Mayor Gaynor, by President Straus Of the board of water supply and commis- sioners John F. Calvin and Charles N. Chadwick, as well as J. Waldo Smith, chief engineer of the board, and others connected with the construction of the | aqueduct.
 Seventeen Feet Per Day | The boring of the tunnel has been rushed at the rate of r feet day dur ing the last few weeks, squads working
 from both ends The work has pro- gressed so uniformly that even the hour when the final blast can be fired has been named by tho engineers.
 When the dynamite has been exploded and the debris cleared away, the mayor
 will lead the visiting party in a walk through the tunnel starting from Break | Neck, N l., on the east side, and wind ing up at Storm King.
 | The tunnel has been blasted through | solid rock and in it's present condition.
 without I cement lining, which is to bs put in later, is watertight. The tunnel | is s022 feet in length and extends between two shafts, 115O feet deep, sunk on either side of the river. The work for sinking | these shafts was done by the city, but the contract for boring the tunnel has been ! executed by private contracting firm.
 The city lad great difficulty in finding suitable location for crossing under the liver. as it was necessary to find solid stratum of icck without break through which the tunnel could be carried. The ! tunnel is IS feet wide in diameter and cylindrical. The diameter will be reduced | to If feet when the concrete lining is in place.
 Marks an Epoch | While the tunnel itself Is a tremen- dous work the entire waterworks sys- j tenn, taken as a whole, Is an epochal one. More and deeper problems than those encountered in the building of 1.-the Panama canal have been met with Iby the engineers employed In the task, and many of them are on almost as gigantic a scale.
 An army of 5000 workers and count less machinery are distributed over the
 work from Staten Island and Queens for 120 miles northly to the new col lecting works at. the Ashokan reser- voir. where a huge dam will bottle up the waters of myriads of mountain streams. The entire work of construc- ting the high level concrete aqueduct from the heart of the CatskiHs to the sea is being carried on simultaneously over the entire line by more than 30 of the largest construction forms in the world. Each contractor is inter- ested only in his particular section | of the work. which covers from three | to ten miles in extent with an esti- mated cost of from $1,Q0o,0o to s12.- 000.0 900 each.
 Danger of Water Famine The danger of a serious water famine | in New York was .foreseen by inves- | tigators many years ago. The present system is barely able to meet the de- mands now made upon it, but the new system will be able to supply an en- tire city of 10,000,000 which it is esti- mated New York will have by 193O Also the general plan of it is such that | its capacity can be doubled by con struction of additional <~dams in the Catskills that would require less than years work to build. As compared with other water supply systems. New