Two hundred feet beneath our feet, BCH client Louisville MSD is building the largest public infrastructure project underway in the city: the Waterway Protection Tunnel. Eighteen stories underground, a massive, 412-foot-long tunnel-boring machine is hard at work carving a four-mile-long tunnel through solid bedrock.
It’s BCH’s job to help our client communicate with the community about the significant impact the tunnel will have on public health, safety and quality of life. When complete, the 4-mile tunnel will store 55 million gallons of stormwater, preventing sewer overflows that pollute area waterways.
Recently, our team was able to experience the project’s progress first hand by taking a trip inside the tunnel alongside members of the news media. With a full contingent of more than a dozen reporters and photographers from every media outlet in the city, our team took a unique “elevator” ride (really a cage being held by wire and a crane!) that quickly lowers everyone 200 feet underground to the tunnel floor.
Once underground, we escorted media on their ride on the small train that transports workers and materials to their job site each day. This day, it was 1.5 miles from where you exit the elevator (approximately underneath Louisville Slugger Field). We helped manage media interviews with project spokespeople on the train, as well as at the working site of the tunnel boring machine.
Come on, who has ever conducted media interviews, on a train, 18 stories underground? Pretty cool, right? In all, it was a one-of-a-kind news media opportunity to help tell MSD’s story of going to great engineering lengths to create safer, cleaner waterways for the community.
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