Croton Aquaduct (the source of Manhattan's Water) in 1907

Tunnel Number Three

Ever wonder what’s going on beneath even the subway tunnels? The answer is one of the largest public works projects in the Western Hemisphere, a tunnel that is being constructed 800 feet below ground. As Euri explains to Jack and Cora, the city has been building Tunnel Number Three to back up two older and deteriorating water tunnels. The 24-foot diameter Tunnel Number Three was started in 1970. When it’s finally completed-- according to schedule around 2020--it will carry water 64 miles from the reservoirs of upstate New York to the heart of Manhattan.See photos of it here.

Sandhogs, legendarily tough construction workers who specialize in working underground, risk life and limb to complete this urgent public safety project. Every day, as described in The Twilight Prisoner, they ride a metal cage into a hole as deep as the Chrysler Building is long. There, the real danger begins. The sandhog that Jack, Cora, and Euri meets tells them the story of a fellow hog who was impaled by a falling icicle. This story is true. Others are crushed by heavy machinery or injured by explosives used to blast the tunnel. Twenty-four men have already died building Tunnel Number Three.

Tunnel Number Three isn’t open to the public (nor was I eager to go that far beneath the earth). Fortunately, my friend David Grann, a writer at The New Yorker magazine, wrote a fabulous article called “City of Water” about his visits to the tunnel and the world of the sandhogs that made me feel as if I had traveled there myself.  Read about David's article, one of my favorites, here.