Aug 29, 2017
Measurand employees visited McCook Reservoir, part of the Chicago Tunnel and Reservoir Plan (TARP)—a massive civil engineering project that was commissioned in the mid-70s and is expected to be completed in 2029. The site visit was part of the 10th Annual Breakthroughs in Tunneling Short Course attended by Measurand’s Geotechnical Instrumentation Specialists, Matthew Miller and Robert Praeg, Aug. 14–16.
“You don’t really realize how big (McCook Reservoir) is until you are inside of it,” Miller said.
During the visit they accessed the 10 m (33 ft) diameter McCook Tunnel that runs 490 m (1,600 ft) to connect to the TARP mainstream tunnel. A 93 m (300 ft) deep main gate serves as the tunnels entry point, which exists at a scale that is difficult to believe without seeing it first hand.
“You see people in the distance putting up netting on the side of the walls and you can barely see them. They’re like specks on this huge wall,” Praeg said.