24 Jul 2015

News:

Anything But Boring: Lady Bird Emerges!

Lady Bird TBM is alive! Photo courtesy of DC Water via Twitter.

Lady Bird TBM is alive! Photo courtesy of DC Water via Twitter.

I’m not entirely sure what makes an enormous machine so exciting and compelling, but I can’t seem to get enough of DC Water’s tunnel boring machines with their delightful names and sassy attitudes.

After two years of mining, excavating, and digging a four-mile tunnel to help improve the water quality in the Anacostia River, Lady Bird –the tunnel-boring machine, not the former First Lady whose valuable contributions to the environment and the preservation of native flora inspired the machine’s name– emerged yesterday, victorious (if a little mucky) from the river, at the corner of New Jersey and Tingey Streets SE.

From DC Water’s press release: “Lady Bird removed approximately 1.2 million tons of material that she mined. This was hauled away in nearly 72,000 truckloads over the last two years. She built the tunnel with 28,189 pre-cast concrete segments which made up 4,027 full rings… Lady Bird is being sold back to her German manufacturer, Herrenknecht.” These tunnels will help with rainwater overflow and eventually there will be a green system in place.

No doubt both Nannie Helen Burroughs and Lucy Diggs Slowe will be delighted to say Auf Wiedersehen to Lady Bird.

Sassy machine ladies. Via Twitter.

Sassy machine ladies. Via Twitter.

For more information about the Clean Rivers Project you should definitely visit dcwater.com/cleanrivers. Btw, you can also kill a couple of hours’ worth of “work” watching the videos. It’s Friday! You’ll be going BRRRRRRPPPPPP in no time.

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