By Henry Brean | Las Vegas Review-Journal
The “Eagle has landed” moment came at the start of Wednesday’s Southern Nevada Water Authority board meeting, when engineering director Marc Jensen stood to announce what many people in the room were already buzzing about.
“I have very good news to share with you,” Jensen told the board. “Today we are at a major milestone in our tunneling efforts.”
As he spoke, a 23-foot-tall, rock-chewing worm of a machine beneath the bed of Lake Mead was slowly and carefully grinding through the last few feet of a three-mile journey that began in 2011.
Three hours later, at one minute before noon, workers from general contractor Vegas Tunnel Constructors would guide the $25 million tunneling machine as it broke through the concrete wall of the intake structure already in place on the bottom of the lake, the last major step in building a third straw to supply water to the Las Vegas Valley.
