It was a boring task, but someone had to do it. Lady Bird—D.C. Water’s massive tunnel boring machine—has finally completed its two-year mission to carve out a 4 and 1/2 mile tunnel underneath the Potomac River.

In April of 2013, local officials gathered to christen the 1,300-ton, 400-foot-long boring machine—nicknamed “Lady Bird” (it even got its own Twitter account!)—and it’s long, arduous mission: to carve out a long tunnel more than 100 feet below the bottom of the Potomac River. The reason? It would anchor DC Water’s Clean River Project by allowing for the storage of runoff from the city’s combined sewers during heavy storms. Previously, all that nasty runoff was dumping into the Potomac and Anacostia Rivers.

But the completion of Lady Bird’s work does not mean the project is done. There will be another—albeit not as large—boring machine brought in to expand on Lady Bird’s work and finish the tunnel system for the $2.6 billion sewer project. Though no other boring machine brought in will be quite like Lady Bird, which was called a “marvel of technology” by its engineers, according to the Post.

The entire project—which will stretch 13 miles from Bloomingdale to DC Water’s Blue Plains Wastewater Treatment Plant in Southeast—is expected to be completed in 2022.

Filed Under: clean rivers project, dc water, lady bird, tunnel boring machine,