Pollution & cleanup
Water
completed 2008
City of Atlanta
General area only

West Area CSO storage tunnel

An 8.5-mile tunnel that stores up to 177 million gallons of combined-sewer overflow from the Tanyard Creek, Clear Creek and North Avenue basins and sends it to a treatment facility at the R. M. Clayton plant.

See it on the map All Water records

The record

The city's fact sheet expected completion in November 2007 and gives a 24-foot finished diameter; the city auditor's 2014 report says the West Area tunnel was finished in October 2008 and describes it as 26 feet across, with a shaft about 200 feet deep. The tunnel carries the flows to a dedicated CSO treatment facility at the R. M. Clayton Water Reclamation Center on Bolton Road, giving more treatment than the screening and disinfection at the basins' 1980s-90s CSO facilities. The auditor found average annual water-quality violations fell 65% after the combined-sewer projects were finished and reported only two overflows since, both in the September 2009 flood.

Today: Underground; surface works at the CSO facilities and at R. M. Clayton.