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Massive Pipes Arrive on Hudson Street for Water Main Project

By Julie Shapiro | May 20, 2011 4:02pm | Updated on May 21, 2011 9:38am

By Julie Shapiro

DNAinfo Reporter/Producer

TRIBECA — A massive pipe that will one day carry drinking water to thousands of New Yorkers arrived on Hudson Street Friday afternoon.

It was not the first pipe to be installed as part of the city's $600 million Hudson Street water main project, and it won't be the last — but its arrival was big enough to briefly stop traffic and attract the attention of gawking passersby.

The gargantuan steel tube — 40 feet long and 48 inches in diameter — rose into the air and was carefully lowered into place, among the rocky mud and the tangle of utilities that lie beneath TriBeCa's streets.

That pipe will eventually join dozens of others to connect to the city's new Third Water Tunnel, a decades-old mega project slated to come online in 2013, allowing the city to repair the existing water tunnels.

The Third Water Tunnel runs 600 to 700 feet below street level and is periodically studded with shafts that pump the water up to the surface. One of those shafts is on Hudson Street near the Holland Tunnel rotary.

Nine months into the five-year Hudson water main project, the city is a couple weeks ahead of schedule, said Tom Foley, assistant commissioner at the Department of Design and Construction, as he gave a tour of the site.

"We're looking to expedite the work in any way we can," Foley said, acknowledging the quality-of-life impact on residents, who have called the project a "nightmare."

The contractor stands to receive over $1 million for finishing the construction on time and will face financial penalties if the work falls behind, Foley said.

The city also sliced six months off the overall project's timeline earlier this year by moving the work on Franklin Street earlier in the schedule.

The city is doing similar water main projects all over Manhattan, wherever the Third Water Tunnel comes to the surface — but Hudson Street is the only one that the Department of Design and Construction is overseeing itself, rather than contracting the engineering and supervision out to another company.

"This is very special because of the location in lower Manhattan," Foley said. "We wanted to have our best engineers on this site."

Downtown's streets are older and have more densely packed utilities, Foley said. Many of the streets will also be covered in new cobblestones when they are complete, a painstaking process that has to be done with care.

On Friday, the new pipe joined 400 feet of trunk water mains that have already been connected. Workers will begin welding the new pipe into place next week, putting it through multiple tests before it goes into use.

Foley said his biggest challenge is coordinating all of the work, which involves private utility companies, multiple government agencies and oft-disgruntled residents and business owners.

"We're all here for the common good," he said.