CLEVELAND — The Granite-Super Joint Venture has won a $324.8 million contract from the Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District to build the Big Creek Tunnel, the last of seven large-diameter storage tunnels planned under the region’s $3 billion Project Clean Lake program.
The contract, announced Thursday, covers 22,300 linear feet of 20-foot-diameter tunnel plus another 3,115 linear feet of ancillary tunnels, adits, overflow and connecting tunnels, and a dewatering tunnel. The work also includes multiple shafts, diversion and screening structures, gate control vaults, consolidation sewers, and an overflow box culvert with site restoration.
Project Clean Lake is a 24-year program the sewer district began in 2011 to improve water quality across Northeast Ohio. Once the Big Creek Tunnel is finished, the district says it will eliminate about 550 million gallons of combined sewer overflows from local waterways every year.
“The scale and complexity of this project align directly with Granite’s strengths in large-diameter tunneling and shaft construction,” said Jim Nickerson, vice president of Granite’s Tunnel Division. “This is a major wastewater infrastructure project, and it will strengthen system performance and protect local waterways across Northeast Ohio.”
Construction is scheduled to begin this fall and wrap up in the winter of 2030. The project will be booked into the company’s third-quarter backlog, the company said.
The sewer district serves a large part of Greater Cleveland, where aging combined sewer systems can send untreated sewage into Lake Erie and area rivers during heavy rains. Tunneling programs like Project Clean Lake are federally mandated responses to that problem, and similar projects are underway in cities across the Great Lakes.
