The cost of the city’s rescue mission for a trapped digging machine has jumped to $25 million
‘Estimated $9-million project to rescue the trapped machine has run into several setbacks, ballooning the cost by $16 million.’
The rescue of a little tunnelling machine trapped beneath Old Mill Road is turning into a big, expensive headache for the city.
The “micro-tunnelling boring machine” was lowered into the ground at Old Mill Drive and Riverside Drive in spring 2022 by a city-contracted company. Tethered by cables, it was supposed to grind a 282-metre tunnel to just north of Bloor Street.
For about three months it munched away, creating a storm-sewer pathway to help flood-proof homes in the area. But, just seven metres short of the exit shaft, it snagged on steel wires left underground from nearby condo foundation work.
In March, city staff, while telling the Star about a $9-million plan to rescue the trapped digger, said it got stuck after its cutter head chewed the wires into a “bunch of spaghetti” wrapped around the machine.
But on Monday, a city committee heard that the cost of the rescue plan has ballooned by $16 million to about $25 million. The machine was supposed to be rescued in April, allowing completion of the new storm sewer, but it will remain stuck underground until at least the end of August.
“It’s a mess,” the local councillor, Gord Perks, told colleagues on the government services committee. Residents are fed up with traffic disruptions and blocked driveways, he added, but “I don’t want anyone to leave the room thinking that city staff have done anything but 110 per cent on managing this crisis since it started.”
