The Shoreline Storage Tunnel, the fifth of seven such storage tunnels of Project Clean Lake, successfully completed more than two-and-a-half miles of mining activity on May 30th when the tunnel boring machine broke into the final project shaft 100 feet underground.
In total the tunnel boring machine (TBM) completed the 14,000 feet drive over 603 days. The tunnel diameter is 23-foot diameter and the storage tunnel will eventually reduce Lake Erie pollution by 350 million gallons a year when finished in 2025.
The Shoreline Storage Tunnel milestone marked the latest advancement of Project Clean Lake, the 25-year $3 billion program to drastically reduce the amount of combined sewage entering local waterways through a blend of tunnel construction, treatment plant expansion, and green infrastructure.
The first three tunnels, now complete and online, are the Doan Valley Tunnel (2021), the Euclid Creek Tunnel (2018) and Dugway Storage Tunnel (2020).
The Westerly Storage Tunnel is also complete, and ready to go online once its dewatering pump station is activated later this year.
Southerly Tunnel construction is ramping up right now in Cuyahoga Heights and the Slavic Village neighborhood of Cleveland.
The last of the seven will be the Big Creek Tunnel, which is now under design with construction getting started in 2026.
Project Clean Lake will be complete in 2036.
73 of Project Clean Lake’s 79 projects are complete or underway, and Lake Erie is nearly 2 billion gallons a year cleaner because of them.
