RIVERSIDE — A steel drill head popped out of the ground like a gopher out of its hole in the early morning hours Friday on a Boone County hillside, completing a 3,000-foot-plus trip under the Ohio River.

        The drill head cleared the initial tunnel, which within a week will hold a 36-inch-diameter steel water pipe intended to carry water from the Cincinnati Water Works to some 60,000 customers in Florence and Boone County.

        “We were only about 1 foot off of where we expected to come out,” said Water Works Principal Engineer Joe Zistler on Friday as he looked across the river from the drilling site on the Ohio side just below River Road (U.S. 50).

        “That's pretty good. We're actually ahead of schedule at this point.”

        Boone County and Florence entered into an agreement with the water works in 1999 to purchase water from the Cincinnati facility, a move that is expected to save the Florence area of Boone County — the second-fastest growing county in Kentucky — about $1 million annually. The water currently is supplied by Northern Kentucky Water Service District.

        Installation of the pipeline under the river will cost about $2.4 million and is part of a $57 million construction project which includes more than 30 miles of water main, a pump station, a reservoir and three elevated storage tanks.

        “The way things are going now, we should be pulling the (36-inch) pipe back through from the Kentucky side by next Saturday,” Mr. Zistler said.
       “Once we begin pulling the pipe through the tunnel, it should take about 10 hours to complete.”

        The drilling procedure, known as horizontal directional drilling, was developed by the oil well industry. It allowed the contractor to guide a drill head 30 feet under the river bottom, through gravel and dirt, and up to the Kentucky bank.

        It began with an 8 3/4-inch diameter pilot hole, and then larger diameter drill heads were used to ream out the hole to a final diameter of 48 inches.

        The process also involved pumping Bentonite drilling mud, a slick clay substance, into the hole as the drill cut through the soil and rock, maintaining even pressure to prevent collapse and reduce friction. The mixture was pumped out of the hole into a retention reservoir on the other side, where the Bentonite was refined from the gravel and soil and recycled, while the remaining gravel and soil was removed to a fill area.

        “We'd love to be done before Christmas, and I think we will,” Mr. Zistler said. “The contractor (Tom Allen Construction Co.) has people from all over the country working in this crew.”

        Completing the pipeline under the river is only the first phase of the project. The water main installation, pump station and other work won't be completed until early 2003.

        Florence Mayor Diane Whalen said Friday the work to bring the water main through Florence and into the county will undoubtedly result in some traffic flow problems next summer.

        “We have to come up the middle of Turfway Road, then right on Burlington Pike past Boone County High School, then down Oblique Street and over to U.S. 42, then back to U.S. 25 to Weaver Road,” she said. “It could be tough on traffic for a while. I wish there was a way for the state to come up with funding for the widening and repavement of Turfway Road at the same time as the water pipe installation. It's on the six-year (state highway) plan, but it appears there will be no money for that project.”

        Mrs. Whalen said the benefits of the contract with CWW include an unlimited water supply and state-of-the-art water treatment from the Cincinnati facility.

        “The original deal was actually struck about 1995 by Boone County Water Director Paul Kroger, Florence Water Works Director Hal Hedges, Judge-executive Ken Lucas (now a U.S. Congressman), (the late Florence Mayor) Evelyn Kalb and (former) Boone County Administrator Jim Collins,” she said.

        “We're just following up on what they started. They had the vision and realized what the county's water needs would be.”

        When the project is completed, CWW expects to pump about 20 million gallons per day to Boone County and Florence beginning in March 2003, with the ability to pump 30 million gallons daily when needed, according to water works officials. CWW has approximately 50 million gallons per day excess water treatment capacity.

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