Massive Sewer Tunnel Being Installed Under Myers Park High School

Sixty feet below the classrooms and hallways of Myers Park High School, an engineering feat is underway.

Crews are building a massive tunnel right through the campus of the school. It’s part of a sewer project that will enhance the current system that runs through the Myers Park neighborhood.

The massive tunnel, two years in the making, is referred to as the Briar Creek Relief Sewer Project.

“It's to help handle all the sewer that's along this area,” said Cam Coley of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Utilities Department while pointing to a map. "So when they flush their toilet, it'll be going in this pipe as well."

Pictures show shows crews installing a section of pipe near Meadowbrook Drive and putting in a manhole at the Myers Park Country Club.

The tunnel starts and runs underneath Runnymeade Lane, goes 2,000 feet through a wooded area and then underneath the high school.

The construction did slightly disrupt classes.

"The ground would shake at 4:15 (p.m.), their eyes would go up, like ‘What's going on?’ And they were just digging this tunnel," said Scott Spohler, the science chair at Myers Park High School.

But digging through layer after layer of earth is a slow process.

“Once they remove rock or soil, they have to crane it out and get it out of the way, and then keep digging," Coley said.

So the school is using the tunnel as a real life science lesson.

“They brought us some core samples of what they'd brought in -- what they'd drilled out from inside," Spohler said. “They brought us in some really great maps."

As the students go about their daily lives, the work continues below them. The tunnel should be done when they leave for summer break.

Crews have dug out more than 1,600 feet of rock. They have several hundred more to go before work wraps this summer.

CMUD said this was the cheapest option to get the pipe through the school property, and it also removed the fewest trees.