December 15, 2014 - Historic breakthrough at Lake Mead the 10th December 2014. The “Eagle has landed” moment came at the start of last 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: “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.

Water authority general manager John Entsminger said “I think this is a historic day in Southern Nevada”.

The project involves the construction of a system for collecting and transporting the waters of Lake Mead, the largest man-made lake in the United States, approximately 30 kilometres south-east of Las Vegas (Nevada), in order to increase the supply of water, approximately 4.5 million cubic metres per day, for drinking and domestic use in the city of Las Vegas.

The project, when complete in 2015, will assure a dependable supply of water for future generations of Southern Nevadans.

The unique and world record-setting project encountered the highest water pressures of any tunneling operation to date.

Salini Impregilo CEO Pietro Salini thanks all the successful team who managed the project that can be considered as a “new success for our Group, a new milestone in Salini Impregilo track record and leadership in the water segment”.