Ohio River Tunnel

Pittsburgh is about to bury nearly five miles of its stormwater problem beneath the Ohio River. The Allegheny County Sanitary Authority (ALCOSAN) has awarded a roughly $1 billion contract to Steel City Tunnel Partners, an even joint venture of Lane Construction and Brayman Construction, to build the Ohio River Tunnel. It’s the largest single piece of ALCOSAN’s court-mandated Clean Water Plan.

Project Scope

The work runs about 4.9 miles of deep rock tunnel, with a main hydraulic bore more than 18 feet in diameter carrying combined sewer overflow toward ALCOSAN’s Woods Run treatment plant. The scope also covers multiple drop shafts, regulator structures, and near-surface diversion facilities along the river. Lane, the U.S. arm of Italy’s Webuild, leads project management and the main tunnel-boring operation. Brayman, a Pittsburgh-region heavy-civil contractor, handles shaft construction and near-surface civil work.

Why It Matters

Combined sewer systems spill untreated wastewater into rivers whenever heavy rain overwhelms them, and Pittsburgh’s three-river confluence has sat under a federal consent decree to fix that for years. The tunnel is sized to capture wet-weather flow that today reaches the Ohio, cutting overflow volumes sharply once it’s in service. It’s also one of the biggest water-infrastructure awards in the country this year, and proof that the deep-tunnel model Washington and Cleveland already used is now Pittsburgh’s answer too.

Project Team & Details