I’m curious, where does all the rock and soil etc go that is being drilled out of the Tunnel?

There must be hundreds of tons of rubble produced and you would think that a constant stream of 18 wheelers would be moving day and night, I drive past it twice a day to get to work yet I don’t ever recall seeing any trucks loaded with rubble leaving the site. I know the water produced is collected, filtered then dumped into the ocean, but where does the solid stuff end up?

Kevin,

There is a stream of trucks from the bores to the landfill in Green Valley most days. They and the equipment pushing the fill material around make a lot of noise, between the sound of the engines and the irritating back-up beeps.

For weeks a lot of nice granite has been going into the landfill, creating the grey layer you see there.

Wish this was not a feature of hiking and biking in McNee Ranch, but there it is.

Thanks Carl, I must have sorta missed that!

slightly related:  http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/06/080630130116.htm

From the article:

Using a new software package developed by researchers at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Va., project engineers are getting a detailed 3-D view of the rock exposed in the excavation, adding a new tool for improving both safety and construction progress.

...

The scan data, at a resolution of 5 millimeters, provides information that the software program packages into enormous visualizations incorporating up to 10 meters of excavated tunnel. Engineers then use gVT to spot potential hazards to both the tunnel and the construction crews before weaknesses in the rock have a chance to trigger a collapse.

The information is so detailed that researchers can observe where rock layers are separating and how fractures are oriented. Researchers can even recreate sections of rock after they have fallen, providing a critical asset for determining where and how to safely drill.  Because the data is portable, engineers can conduct all of the analyses from their home base at any time, far from the danger of the tunnel.