CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Sometime this spring, contractors near the Bratenahl-Cleveland border will begin digging a mammoth new hole for a sewer pipe that will be built 200 feet underground -- and run

under

Lake Erie for more than half a mile.

Easily the most noticeable feature on any map of the planned tunnel is this fact: A 3,000-foot-long segment parallel to the shoreline will be buried deep under the surface of the lake.

Other than the existing Morton Salt mines (far deeper at 2,000 feet below ground) and the city of Cleveland's water intake pipes (from 10 to 50 feet below the lake bed), the Euclid Creek tunnel will be the first construction project on record under the lake, a spokesman for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said.

But when construction begins on the $198 million Euclid Creek Tunnel, it will also serve as the first visible evidence in a larger and the much-debated matter -- the $3 billion plan by the Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District to meet requirements of the federal Clean Water Act over the next 25 years.

That planned work has been applauded by environmentalists, but bemoaned by already tax-weary ratepayers in Cleveland and 60 suburbs who will likely see their bills reach $1,000 a year by 2035.

But the work is about to begin because the sewer district board of trustees late last year agreed to those terms in a settlement with the U.S. and Ohio Environmental Protection Agency and U.S. Department of Justice.

Burrowing beneath Lake Erie

The prime contractor on the job, McNally Tunneling, a Canadian-owned company with offices in Westlake, last dug out a tunnel in Westlake nearly 20 years ago, but has never gone under a body of water like Lake Erie.

"That's true, but there's a lot of rock cover up above us," said Tom Szaraz, senior project manager for McNally Tunneling of Westlake, the primary contractor on the project. "We don't foresee any problems."

The sewer district engineered the tunnel to go under the lake in part because the cost of acquiring lake-shore property or easements would likely be greater than the extra cost to lengthen the tunnel and burrow under the lake, officials said.

Instead, the district got the OK from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to tunnel under the lake.

"It turned out that the curve of the tunnel was actually more favorable to go under the lake, anyway," said Kellie Rotunno, sewer district engineer. "Liquids, sewage or anything else, don't like 90-degree turns."

And digging 200 feet below the surface through rock -- known as mining through Chagrin shale by geologists and tunnel contractors -- won't be any different under the lake as it will be is under Lakeshore Boulevard, engineers and contractors said.

"It's really a fairly short piece," said Doug Gabriel, the district's program manager for the Euclid Creek job. "And once you're that far underground, it won't seem any different for the workers -- although it is fairly unique."

The sewer district here, like a number of other regions, has chosen to construct massive sewage storage tunnels -- like the existing Mill Creek Tunnel some 300 feet under Garfield Heights -- to catch and temporarily hold sewer overflows during rainstorms.

The sewage is then pumped to a treatment plant during dry weather and then returned to Lake Erie.

The upcoming project gets its name from the 24-square-mile watershed of Euclid Creek, a stream that drains parts of Beachwood, Lyndhurst, Highland Heights and Richmond Heights before cutting through Euclid-Cleveland border to the lake.

The sewage stored in the new tunnel will be pumped to the district's Easterly plant at East 140th Street, a facility that takes in sewage from a 76-square-mile area from the east side of Cleveland through Mayfield Heights to the east and as far south as Moreland Hills. About 40 percent of that area has combined sanitary-storm sewers.

The 18,000-foot-long, 24-foot-diameter Euclid Creek Tunnel will run from the Bratenahl-Cleveland border east to about 185th Street near the Cleveland-Euclid border. It will reach between 190 and 220 feet under ground and will have the capacity to hold 70 million gallons of combined sewage.

The price of pure water

The Euclid Creek Tunnel is actually the second underground storage tunnel to be built in Northeast Ohio.

Its forerunner -- the Mill Creek sewer built under parts of Cleveland, Garfield Heights and Cuyahoga Heights -- is actually deeper and longer. It gained notoriety, however, because it was the largest project being built by the sewer district in the William Schatz era.

Schatz, the former lawyer for the sewer district, was sentenced to six years in jail after being convicted of bribery and theft in a scheme with several contractors that resulted in vast cost overruns on the Mill Creek Tunnel and other jobs.

For that reason -- and the sheer cost of the Euclid Creek job and a half dozen others proposed by the district in the EPA settlement -- ratepayers have protested skyrocketing rates.

Sewer rates in Northeast Ohio are already increasing at 9 percent per year and are expected to go up 13 percent a year by 2012, depending on the results of a rate study by the district later this year.

Ultimately, ratepayers in Northeast Ohio could end up paying nearly $1,000 per year for sewer services. That staggering figure that drew widespread complaint in late 2010 from a wide range of Northeast Ohio groups, including apartment owners, the NAACP and ratepayers from Parma to Lyndhurst.

Sewer officials have argued, however, that the annual cost is similar to the hit on ratepayers in other older cities in the Midwest, East and Pacific Northwest. Many of those cities are in negotiations with the EPA or also under federal order to stop the overflow of raw sewage and storm water into waterways.

Akron ratepayers, for example, heard recent estimates that they may eventually pay up to $3,000 per year each to meet clean-water requirements.

The Summit County city opted to fight the battle in court. A federal judge, however, has rejected the city's clean-up plan is considering imposing a shorter timetable for improvements that would drive rates astronomically high.

Despite ongoing debate, the Cleveland-based district is now set to begin work on its 25-year clean-up job.

$20 million 'rock-eating' machine

So when those workers start digging that hole when the winter snows melt, they'll be starting a job that will take most of 2011. Once they get the main shaft cut out and reinforced it will be ready to accommodate the 27-foot-wide tunneling machine that will arrive in parts in early in 2012.

The sewer district, however, will at the same time be designing and building a pump station and several other sewer pipes, known as interceptors, in the immediate area to capture more storm water to funnel into the tunnel.

It will take another three years to actually dig and line the tunnel and but the bulk of the work will be done by the $20 million "rock-eating" machine, although the company has yet to select one from between two different manufacturers, Szaraz said.

In either case, however, the $20 million "rock-eating" tunneling machine will likely use some four dozen 50-inch-diameter cutters on the front, which will chew into the shale, breaking it into small pieces. Online videos demonstrate how similar machines work.

Large mechanical buckets will scoop up the debris and dump it onto a conveyor belt, which will carry the rock bits out of the tunnel to be hauled away.

The machine, which will move forward in five-foot increments for the entire 18,000-foot length of the tunnel, will then put pre-formed concrete sections of the tunnel in place before it moves forward to cut again.

"That way when we reach the end, we're basically done," Szaraz said. "We pull the machine back out, do grouting, patching and cleanup and our part is done."

Ultimately, even though most of the work will be underground and away from the view of ratepayers and the general public, it will still be a pretty "cool project," Szaraz said.

"Most people have no real clue what we do unless they've seen 'Sandhogs' on TV or a special on the [English] Channel Tunnel," he said."We just dig holes in the ground, but it's a little more complicated than that, even if they can't see it."