To keep out of Lincoln Center's way during Fashion Week in September, for example, half of the site will be temporarily closed, just as it was last year for the same event, he says.

The city decided to use microtunneling instead of open-cut excavation for this area because Fordham has several water and sewer line connections in the street. "The elevation of those was in direct interference with where our proposed trunk and water main was supposed to go [for an open-cut operation]," Foley says. Also, an open-cut excavation would have interfered with an entrance that Lincoln Center uses for deliveries, he adds.

Crews are preparing for jacking pits and excavation for the microtunneling, which will start next year, says Rick Ocken, project manager at Waterworks, a joint venture of Judlau Contracting Inc. and its parent firm OHL USA and the general contractor for MED609. "We just made two pits—one on each end [of 62nd Street]—and we core through the middle," he says.

The crew is also upgrading a sewer line in Columbus Avenue right in front of Lincoln Center. "That's because the crew is working adjacent to it with the installation of trunk main," Foley says. "We wouldn't want to leave an old sewer in place that could become structurally unstable in years to come, so we take advantage of the situation and do all capital upgrades at one time."

Other infrastructure upgrades are being made at the other sites of the $427-million project as well. "Along with connecting to the tunnel, this is the added benefit of the project.... We're upgrading all the infrastructure in the neighborhood," Crupi says. "When we're finished [with the underground facilities], we come back and restore the streets, the roadways, the sidewalks and curbs; they'll all be brand new."

Mitigating the impact on communities is especially tricky in jobs of this nature, so a DDC or DEP liaison works at every site, says Norberto Acevedo, DDC Community Outreach and Notification Office deputy director. Six to eight months before any construction begins, the project and its community impacts are explained, which are followed by a series of meetings with community boards.

"We don't treat [the work] as one giant project," even for MED609, Acevedo says. "It's four projects in four neighborhoods put under one contract, but we treat it as four projects" and reach out to each neighborhood.

"We don't have the luxury" that some of the vertical building industry has in operating in one restricted space, Foley says. "Unfortunately, all our work is lateral and is sometimes intrusive," which is why providing as much information as early as possible is important. "Whether they like it or not, we become people's neighbors, literally at their doorstep."

TUNNEL NO. 3 PROJECT CLOSES IN ON BROOKLYN, QUEENS

Forty-three years after groundbreaking at the Hillview Reservoir in Yonkers, N.Y., New York City's Water Tunnel No. 3 is nearing completion. The second of three sections, the 8.5-mile-long Manhattan leg is set to be pressurized, flushed and activated this fall. This $2.3-billion portion of the tunnel that sandhogs began boring in 2003 will provide redundancy to Manhattan's water supply, which is currently served by the 96-year-old Tunnel No. 1.

Construction of the 10.5-mile third section of the project is under way in Brooklyn and Queens. This section has two distinct legs from Red Hook, Brooklyn, to Maspeth, Queens. It will also connect with the Richmond Water Tunnel, which serves Staten Island. The third section includes seven shaft connections, five of which have already been completed, says Edward Timbers, a spokesman at the Dept. of Environmental Protection, which manages the city's water supply. This section is set for completion in 2018.

The $2.4-billion, 13-mile first part of the tunnel—which runs from the South Bronx into Manhattan, then east at Central Park and on into Astoria, Queens—was activated in 1998.

Begun in 1970, the entire $6-billion tunnel project is the largest capital project ever undertaken by New York City, Timbers says. It is expected to be activated around 2023, he says. The city currently relies on Tunnel No. 1 and the 77-year-old Tunnel No. 2, which serves the Bronx, Brooklyn and Queens, for most of its drinking water, and it consumes about 1.3 billion gallons a day, he says.