Using spades and shovels, workers are hand mining a 450-ft-long tunnel under Lake Houston Parkway in northeast Houston for massive pipes that will carry raw water from the lake to what will be one of the largest drinking-water treatment plants in the nation. The low-tech work is a sharp contrast to the design of the state-of-the-art drinking-water plant, its complex construction and how difficult it will be to treat the lake’s muddy water.
The water plant, the largest public works project in city history, is “enormously complicated,” says Paul Vranesic, project director for Houston Waterworks, a joint venture of Jacobs and CDM Smith. The JV is building the 320-million-gallon-per-day (mgd) expansion to the Northeast Water Purification plant under a progressive design-build contract with the city of Houston and its four partners.