Ontario’s biggest – and most expensive – new hole in the ground has finally become a tunnel.

Big Becky, the 4,000-tonne boring machine that has been chewing her way through 10.2 kilometres of rock at Niagara Falls finally broke through into daylight shortly after noon Friday, just above the Falls.

She was greeted by Premier Dalton McGuinty, on hand to trumpet his government’s commitment to clean renewable power, even though the project is coming in two years late, and costing $1.6 billion instead of the $985 million budgeted.

She was also greeted by scores of the men and women who have laboured in the tunnel, driving Becky forward and lining the tunnel with smooth concrete.

Men like Niagara Falls native Chris Campbell, were excited to see the project come to fruition.

“There’s light at the end of the tunnel,” said Campbell.

“It’s a big day.”

“It’s starting to kick in,” he said, staring at McGuinty and the other dignitaries, “how big this project actually was.”

Really big, in fact.

The 10.2 kilometre tunnel is 14.4 metres in diameter.

Big Becky ate through 1.6 million cubic metres of rock to reach her goal. That’s enough rock, officials said, to fill the Rogers Centre in Toronto.

And the cement used to line the tunnel would build a sidewalk stretching from Windsor to Quebec City.

Because of cramped conditions in the tunnel, the hundreds of invited dignitaries watched Becky emerge through the final rock barrier on a giant screen, its image dimmed by a brightly shining sun.

One chunk of rock, then more and more fell away as the machine’s working end finally came into view — a giant rotating hemisphere, studded with diamond-hard cutters projecting from the surface.

Despite the excitement of the day, nagging questions about the cost over-run wouldn’t go away.

The project took longer and cost more because Becky ran into unexpected conditions.

She’s designed to go through solid rock, but encountered a stretch of loose, crumbling material that was unsuitable for tunneling. That forced a long and expensive detour.

But if the critics are harping about the cost of the Liberal government’s green energy projects — and Conservative leader Tim Hudak has taken dead aim at them — McGuinty was having none of it.

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“Yes, some of it has come at a price that hasn’t been easy,” McGuinty said.

“But neither was it easy for our parents and grandparents to build our original electricity system, to build our schools, to build our roads.”

“But they did it anyway, because they were builders. And so are we.”

McGuinty shrugged off the cost overrun, pointing out that the tunnel has an expected lifespan of 100 years, once it gets operating in 2013.

“When you spread that cost over the 100-year duration of the project, it just doesn’t get any better in terms of the kind of power we’ve got our hands on here,” he said.

“When you compare the options available to us, nothing is easy, nothing is free,” he said.

“It’s well worth the investment.”

Projects like the tunnel will put Ontario in the forefront of clean energy technology and create tens of thousands of jobs in the province, McGuinty boasted, a claim he is likely to hammer at in the coming election campaign.

But many of the workers had tuned out the political bickering, basking in the glow of the accomplishment.

One worker in hard hat and boots, who didn’t want to be named, noted that crews had actually punched a one-meter gap through the final wall a couple of weeks ago, allowing crews to bask in the feel of air finally gushing through the new tunnel.

“This is all a show, right?” he said.

The workers, he said, were planning a party of their own, the real celebration, in a Niagara Falls hall on Friday night.

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