The Kenisco-Eastview Connection (KEC) Tunnel Project has a contractor: Frontier-Kemper Constructors, according to information published in Engineering News-Record.
The parent company of Frontier-Kemper is Tutor Perini Corporation, who announced that they’d won the contract from The New York City Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) on October 23, 2024. The project is one of DEP’s $3 billion in capital commitments throughout Westchester County “that will improve the nation’s largest municipal water supply system.”
That system serves some 9 million people in New York City and Westchester County, and its Kenisco-Eastview tunnel will be the most expansive tunneling project in the area since the 1940s. It will run approximately two miles and is expected to transport 2.6 billion gallons daily from the Kenisco Reservoir to the Catskill/Delaware Ultraviolet Light Disinfection Facility (CDUV) in Eastview.
The project’s groundbreaking took place in July of 2024 and one of its benefits, according to DEP, is that the tunnel will give them the ability to take other facilities offline for maintenance and inspection while still meeting the region’s water needs.
“Creating additional redundancy in our vital water system is an essential investment for the long-term resilience of the remarkable feat of engineering that provides more than 9 million New Yorkers with a reliable source of pristine tap water,” said DPE Commissioner Rohit T. Aggarwalla.
The mechanics of boring and creating a two-mile long tunnel that can withstand the wear of 2.6 billion gallons per day in volume is momentous. The powerful tunnel boring machines (TBMs) that will be used will excavate horizontally, removing the excavated material behind them. It is a process fraught with complications even through a clear expanse of ground, but in the case of the KEC tunnel, it has to traverse developed land, uneven terrain, and multiple highways and roads.
Anyone deploying a TBM, which is often referred to as a “mole,” needs to be certain that their bore hole will not intersect any underground utilities, or other subsurface facilities.
For instance, typically, utilities are run alongside roadways or in the berm of a highway. When those roads are expanded or moved, which happens often, the utilities often move too. However, the as-builts – updated existing conditions drawings and utility maps – are not updated.
That means that just like when utilizing trenchless technology to install fiber lines, the mole could easily hit and/or sever a utility line, causing service interruptions, hazardous sanitary sewer or gas leakage in the surrounding area, or a serious accident.
And with a project as large as the KEC, having the ability to immediately update, share, and communicate those utility maps and as-builts is of paramount importance. That’s why a geolocated GIS layered utility map is vital to a successful excavation, whether for a tunnel or a straight dig.
How Does Ultraviolet Light Disinfection Work?
Ultraviolet Light Disinfection is one of the primary water treatment tools to fight waterborne pathogens and infectious agents. Just a few of the pathogens that could be found in untreated water include E coli, Salmonella, Enteroviruses like polio, coxsackie, Hepatitis A, Rotavirus, and other viruses that can cause meningitis, cholera, and dysentery, among other serious illnesses.
“The effectiveness of a UV disinfection system depends on the characteristics of the wastewater, the intensity of the UV radiation, the amount of time the microorganisms are exposed to the radiation, and the reactor configuration,” according to the EPA’s Wastewater Technology Fact Sheet.
The mechanics of the system are designed to transfer electromagnetic energy to the genetic material of an organism – either its RNA or DNA – via a mercury arc lamp/mercury vapor. Upon penetrating the organism’s cell wall, it destroys the cell’s reproductive ability. The UV radiation that is generated by discharging electricity via mercury vapor, penetrates the cell’s genetic material and “retards their ability to reproduce,” according to the EPA Fact Sheet.
The efficacy of UV disinfection is depends on a variety of factors:
- Characteristics of the wastewater itself (concentration of colloidal and particulate materials)
- Intensity of the UV radiation applied
- The length of radiation exposure
- The configuration of the reactor
The basic composition of a UV light disinfection system consists of mercury arc lamps, a reactor, and ballasts. The radiation source is a low pressure or medium pressure mercury arc lamp that has high and low intensities. There are many specificities about the optimum light wavelength and intensity, which can be found within the EPA’s Fact Sheet.
Two reactor configurations make up the bulk of the UV system reactors: contact type reactors or non-contact type reactors. You can see the basic make up of the UV light system in this diagram:
A Brief History of UV Light Disinfection for Water Treatment
UV light disinfection has been around since the early 1900s and was first used municipally in France, either at Anon in 1906 or Marseilles in 1909. It began gaining acceptance in the 1970s as wastewater treatment plants looked for alternatives to disinfection byproducts (DBPs) formed in chlorinated water disinfection. The U.S. EPA approved UV in 2003, which led to more widespread adoption.
UV Water Treatment Market Outlook for 2024 and Beyond
While there is no reliable information on the number of physical UV light disinfection water treatment facilities in the U.S., the market appears to be booming. According to industry watchers and publications like Water Online, the UV water treatment market was considered “highly consolidated” and “saturated” in 2019, with a value of $145 million, yet the overall UV disinfection sector (that includes applications other than water) grew to $510 million in 2023, and is expected to top out in excess of $580 million in 2024. The significance of COVID-19 on the market explosion cannot be overstated, but is anticipated to reach more than $2 billion by 2034.
When it comes to municipal water and wastewater, GPRS helps customers lead the safety charge by Intelligently Visualizing The Built World® with utility mapping, NASSCO-certified CCTV video pipe inspections, and accurate subsurface existing conditions capture. Thanks to our national footprint, you can always find a GPRS utility locating Project Manager near you, and our Rapid Response deployment means you can have interactive, layered, and accurate utility maps, often within 48 hours of your call.
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