$1.2 Billion Tunneling Project in Westchester County

We recently announced plans for a $1.2 billion tunneling project that will improve operational reliability of the drinking water supply for more than 9 million people in the city and Westchester County. The public works project will be New York City’s largest water-supply tunneling effort in Westchester County since the 1940s, and its construction will create hundreds of jobs for local laborers. Construction on the first elements of the project is expected to start in approximately five years.

The centerpiece of the project — known as the Kensico-Eastview Connection (KEC) — will be a 2-mile-long tunnel between Kensico Reservoir and the Catskill-Delaware Ultraviolet Light Disinfection Facility in Eastview. This new aqueduct will supplement conveyance between these essential components of the water supply, providing us with the redundancy to perform comprehensive, long-term upkeep of the system. Construction on the first portions of the KEC project are expected to start in approximately five years; work on the tunnel itself is expected to begin around 2025. We expect to finish the project around 2035.

The finished tunnel will measure approximately 27 feet in diameter and run 400–500 feet below ground. It’ll be large enough to carry a maximum of 2.6 billion gallons of water each day. Its design accounts for future growth in the city and Westchester County, the potential addition of treatment facilities, and the need to periodically take other aqueducts out of service for maintenance or inspection.

The project also includes new facilities and site work at Kensico Reservoir and the ultraviolet treatment plant. This includes:

• Upgrading a century-old intake chamber at Kensico Reservoir to draw water into the new tunnel.
• Improving the reservoir’s shoreline around that intake chamber to prevent sediment from entering the new tunnel.
• Constructing a new screen chamber just north of our main campus at the reservoir, near Columbus Avenue in Valhalla, to remove debris from the water. We’ll also incorporate an interconnection for the Town of Mount Pleasant water supply.
• Upgrading the chemical feed systems at Kensico Reservoir to provide the proper treatment of drinking water in the new tunnel and existing ones. The work at Kensico Reservoir will also include a range of grading, drainage, stormwater and utility improvements.
• Building a connection chamber at the ultraviolet plant to receive water from the new tunnel. The chamber will connect to a number of existing pipes at the ultraviolet facility that were installed at the time of its construction. Work at this site will also include a number of projects related to drainage, stormwater and utility improvements.

We look forward to working with our neighbors in Westchester County to ensure that the City’s waterworks continue to supply high-quality drinking water to more than 9.6 million New Yorkers every day.