Mott MacDonald, Stantec Win Engineering Award for NEORSD’s Easterly Tunnel System

By TBM Staff June 16, 2021

Mott MacDonald’s Chris Petta, right, accepts the Grand Award on behalf of the project team.

The ACEC Ohio Engineering Excellence Awards Competition is a national program that, for over 50 years, has recognized engineering companies for the role they play in developing projects “that demonstrate a high degree of achievement, value and ingenuity.”

Every year, engineering companies from across the country enter their most innovative design projects and studies in state competitions, such as ACEC Ohio’s, with the top entries from each state advancing to the national competition in Washington.

This year, a tunnel project in Cleveland took ACEC Ohio’s top prize. The Grand Award was presented to engineering firms Mott MacDonald and Stantec, as well as the owner, the Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District, for the Easterly CSO Tunnel System. The awards were presented June 10 at the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium.

The Easterly CSO Tunnel System, the first major portion of the Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District‘s Project Clean Lake, will reduce CSOs by 1 billion gallons. The project comprises the Euclid Creek Tunnel, Dugway Storage Tunnel, and Easterly Tunnel Dewatering Pump Station.

The Euclid Creek Tunnel and Dugway Storage Tunnel are each 24 ft in diameter and about 230 ft below ground. The Euclid Creek Tunnel is 3.4 miles long, with a capacity of 68 million gallons. The Dugway Storage Tunnel is 2.8 miles long, with a capacity of 56 million gallons. The two tunnels converge at the Easterly Tunnel Dewatering Pump Station, a cavern-style dry-pit pump station 240 ft below ground with a capacity of 160 million gallons per day (MGD).

Mott MacDonald and Stantec each had project design responsibilities, both providing engineering innovations, reducing risk, cutting construction time, and saving money.

The project will benefit the approximately 18,000 residents in Cleveland and more than 11 million people who get their drinking water from Lake Erie. The many people who use the lake, river, and streams for fishing, diving, boating, or other recreational purposes will benefit.

Projects are judged according to these five criteria: