Work is well under way on the new $1-billion Croton Water Treatment Plant in the Bronx. The plant will be built completely underneath Van Cortlandt Park at the Mosholu golf course. Since March, 2005 Schiavone Construction Company, Secaucus, N.J., led by Carl J. Cosenzo, executive vice president and operations manager, has been at work as the general contractor on the project. Hazen and Sawyer, in joint venture with Metcalf & Eddy of NY, Inc., served as consultant to the DEP on the Croton Water Treatment Plant EIS.

The filtration plant will allow New York to meet the growing public water supply and public health needs of the city, as well as comply with state and federal drinking water standards and regulations. Once completed, the 380,000-square-foot concrete treatment facility will have the capacity to filter 290 million gallons per day from the Croton Reservoir, the oldest of the three active systems (Croton, Catskill and Delaware) which provide drinking water to New York.

The Croton System provides about 10 percent of the city's average daily demand of 1.4 billion gallons per day and as much as 30 percent of in-city consumption during droughts. The water will primarily be used in low-lying areas of the Bronx and Manhattan.

In September 2004 the city council approved a memorandum of understanding with New York state allowing the city to move forward with the construction of a water filtration plant. As part of the agreement, more than $220 million generated from water and sewer revenue will be spent on improvements to Bronx Parks over the next five years. Ground was broken in May 2005 on the $3.8-million renovation of St. James Park, the first of more than 70 Bronx parks reconstruction projects related to the construction of the Croton Water Filtration Facility that will be completed over the next five years.

In addition to the construction of two water tunnels to transport water to and from the filtration system, the first phase of construction challenges include the drilling, blasting and excavation of more than 1 million cubic yards of rock and soil. The excavation will be 500 feet by 600 feet and 100 feet deep into the rock.

For the initial construction phase of the project, general contractor Schiavone Construction Co. of Secaucus, N.J., chose Quikrete grout to help stabilize the walls of the main access shaft during construction.

The grout is a non-metallic Portland cement based mixture including expansive additives specially designed for the grouting of steel columns, bearing plates, pre-cast concrete, and anchors. Its non-shrink characteristics allow the grout to be stable and capable of handling high-load transfers. The formulation of Quikrete Non-Shrink General Purpose Grout complies with ASTM C109/109M, ASTM C939, ASTM C1090, and ASTM C1107 requirements.

Quikrete has provided 62 3,000-pound super sacks of non-shrink, general purpose grout to reinforce the shaft tunnel for the duration of filtration plant's construction. The grout is being used to anchor a few hundred tiebacks drilled horizontally into the walls of the access shaft which will maintain the integrity of the shaft and provide a safe working environment.

Schiavone Construction Co. had good reasons selected Quikrete for its 34-month site preparation contract.

"[The grout has] superior flowability which is allowing for the smooth progress of our grouting operation," stated Nelson Sanchez Jr., Schiavone Construction Co. project engineer. "Combined with the bulk delivery system, our operation is able to continuously batch large amounts of grout precisely when needed to be pumped around each anchor — allowing us to maintain our focus on the job at hand."

"The Quikrete bulk mortar and silo system was ideally suited for the Croton project," added Dennis Winchester, Quikrete executive vice president.

The Quikrete Companies are the largest manufacturers of packaged concrete in the United States, and have more than 80 manufacturing facilities in the United States, Canada, Puerto Rico, and South America.

For drilling work on the job, equipment on-site has grown to include 11 Tamrock drills. This could be the largest fleet of Tamrocks in a non-mining project in the United States, says Tamrock. Contractors Sales, of Albany, N.Y., has been working with general contractor Schiavone Construction of Newark, N.J., on the project. Said Contractors' George Haas:

"(Sandvik Mining Applications Engineer) Bill Hissem and I spent several days with the contractor and Bill created a 3-D mockup of the entire site. We went over how we'd do pre-split and the mining process once we had the rigs there. We talked about the types of bits that would be needed, the steel, number of rigs, the training that would be required, and how long the project would take."

Haas added that this is also the first use of hydraulic-powered drifters in the New York City limits. Previously, only air-powered units had been used.

Construction on the project is slated to run through October 2011.