
Elm Road GS Water Intake Tunnel
Providing over two-billion gallons of cooling water per day
Kenny/Shea Joint Venture WePower, LLC (Owner) | United States | 2004-2008
27’-4”diameter of primarily unlined tunnel beneath Lake Michigan
Peak daily capacity of2.2 billion gallonsof cooling water
Challenges
- The Elm Road generating station (ERGS) needed a cleaner, more efficient system of cooling technology.
Solutions
- The ERGS Cooling Water Intake System was constructed by Kenny/Shea JV.
- It consists of a lake-water intake tunnel excavated in rock and is 9,226-foot long; 27’-4” in diameter.
- Approximately 2,000 feet of the tunnel is lined to a finished diameter of 25 feet.
- The new water intake tunnel can supply a total of 2.2 billion gallons per day of cooling water to the existing Oak Creek and new Elm Road power plants.
Highlights
- This design-build contract combined drill-and-blast and tunnel-boring machine (TBM) operations using main beam gripper TBM and rock-support selection based on the geotechnical-baseline reporting of rock mass classifications.
- The dike wall structure was approximately 250-feet long and contained nine gates to provide cooling water under emergency tunnel bypass conditions.
- Difficult marine construction involved dredging, cofferdam construction, and underwater work while maintaining a cooling water supply to the existing Oak Creek Power Plant (OCPP).
- A sunken caisson construction was used for on-shore mining and OCPP shafts.
- After completing tunnel mining, the TBM machine was disassembled underneath Lake Michigan and carried in pieces back to beginning of the tunnel for removal.
Project Numbers
Project cost:US$105 millionHow we can help you
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