Drip, drip, drip: Leaks plague Boston's Big Dig

Chicago Tribune ^ | December 25. 2004 | Stevenson Swanson

[Land_of_Lincoln_John]

BOSTON -- It's a $14.6 billion engineering marvel, a brand-new complex of highway tunnels beneath downtown Boston that allows traffic to whisk through one of the most congested business districts in the nation.

There's just one problem. It leaks like a sieve.

After more than a decade of monumental traffic jams and constantly shifting detours, construction of the Central Artery and Tunnel Project--known locally as the "Big Dig"--largely came to an end earlier this year, and local officials opened the new downtown tunnel with great fanfare.

But in September, water started pouring through a tunnel wall one afternoon, causing lane closings and snarling rush-hour traffic. That wall leak has been patched temporarily, and engineers for the state turnpike authority, which is in charge of the project, say the nearly 4 miles of Big Dig tunnels that pass under or close to Boston Harbor are safe.

Still, the bad news kept coming.

Memos came to light showing that inspectors for Bechtel/Parsons Brinckerhoff, the project managers, flagged the tunnel wall as flawed in 1999, but no one did anything about it. In memos from 1997, engineers at Bechtel/Parsons Brinckerhoff raised concerns about the waterproofing method being used in the project, but the work went ahead.

It turned out that not just the wall was leaking. The tunnel roof has several hundred leaks--nearly 500 in November, the turnpike authority said, but the number changes as existing leaks are patched and new ones spring up.

Those leaks are much smaller, amounting in some cases to trickles or slow drips, but they are already staining the tiles that line the labyrinthine tunnel system, which makes up about half the Big Dig's 7.8 miles of new roadway.

Despite official assurances that the tunnels are safe, the leaks have given many Boston commuters the jitters.

[mainepatsfan]

This thing has been a financial disaster from the beginning.

[CR]

How in the world can the tunnel be less than perfect...it was built with 100% union labor?

I don't understand.

[mainepatsfan]

Bigger question...how could a union job be over budget???!!!

[rawhide]

In Leningrad, Russia, they had problem like this in one of their metro lines, fought the small leaks for years, until one night it collasped, completely flooding the metro line. That was about 5-6 years ago, and the metro line has been abandoned as unfixable. I think we may be seeing a repeat here, unless emergency mesasures are taken.

[squirt]

I think you are on to something.

[NewHampshireDuo]

How in the world can the tunnel be less than perfect...it was built with 100% union labor?

....and managed by 100% Democrats.

[razorback-bert]

This tunnel is for light rail, right?

I still want to know how this boondoggle gots past the greens?

[ChadGore]

A 100% Union job over budget and bad quality?! Can't be !

[laishly]

This project is the fruit of the 40-year domination of the Dims in Congress. This thing was ballyhooed as a great accomplishment, but I felt while it was being built that the federal government had no business financing what was essentially a municipal construction project. One would have thought that Boston was the District of Columbia.

[JohnG45]

"...it was built with 100% union labor?"

I am no fan of unions but let us lay the blame where it belongs. The article makes it clear that it was design flaws and never mentions shoddy workmanship.

[giotto]

Yikes! And I thought driving on the lower deck of the Bay Bridge, from San Francisco to Oakland. was a little spooky. That's another boondoggle: 15 years after the Loma Prieta earthquake that collapsed a portion of this bridge, work has not even begun on the replacement bridge.

The way I see it, if the tunnel is leaking this badly, so soon after its opening, it won't be very long before there's a catastrophe. Things that are sound do not give off drastic signals like this. There's something terribly wrong with Big Dig.

[Guillermo]

But that was communist labor that built the Leningrad metro.

Oh wait...

[reg45]

They can get big bilge pumps, after all the whole state is full of bilge.

[Iscool]

You guys are too funny...Union labor doesn't design, direct and inspect the work...

That work is the sole responsibility of highly educated, extraordinarily intelligent, non-union managers and engineers...

Put the blame where it belongs you goof-balls...

[mainepatsfan]

This is a classic example of what happens when tax dollars are used for something this big. The opportunity for fraud and waste are enormous.

[Ursus arctos horribilis]

A total fiasco, but not a word about MA two finest US Senators who lobbied day and night to get the rest of the nation to pour billions into that leaky hole in the ground.

Only Republican conservatives are ever held accountable, democrats go blithely forth boondoggling disaster after disaster, with no more than a wink and a nod in retribution.

I read a few years ago the lowest common union laborers were making well over 100 grand a year on this project.

[BradyLS]

I'm no engineer, but does this sound like a catastrophic failure involving hundreds of motorists just waiting to to happen?

[The Mayor]

I'm in shock! gasp!!

Union labor is much more qualified than "us" non union construction workers.

What a frikin joke, I wonder how much more this will cost the taxpayers of my home state.
I moved to a state just as corrupt, New York where unions rule..

[ProudVet77]

A total fiasco, but not a word about MA two finest US Senators who lobbied day and night to get the rest of the nation to pour billions into that leaky hole in the ground.
Actually it was Kennedy that drove the project. Kerry as usual did nothing active, although he voted for it.

The engineers were dealt a bad hand to start with. They had to, for the most part follow the overhead 93 highway. Sadly 85% of that was built on landfill. The soil around the tunnel is sludge. Somebody should tell politicians that they can't change the law of physics.
Yes it can be argued that the engineers said it couldn't be done, but they were guaranteed a profit, so why bother.