Major Chesapeake Bay Bridge

VIRGINIA BEACH — A major expansion project at the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel has been delayed for several months after workers came across an old ship anchor buried beneath the shipping channel.

In late May, a heavy machine burrowing out a new tunnel beneath the bay — to carry more cars and trucks across the waterway — struck the large steel anchor in its path.

“The first piece that came out, we didn’t know what it was — it was just a piece of metal, but it looked like it was something from an anchor,” said Mike Crist, the deputy executive director overseeing infrastructure for the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel Authority.

But a couple more pieces came out days later, dropping into the conveyor system that carries clay, soil and rock to the bay’s surface. One had the name “W.L. Byers & Co.” engraved on its side.

“A little bit of Google searching and we said, ‘Yep, W.L. Byers out of Sunderland, England,” Crist said. That company produced anchors between the late 1860s and the 1980s.

Though the entire anchor still hasn’t surfaced, “it’s a good sized ship anchor from what we can tell,” Crist said. He estimated the anchor once had a 5-foot wide base and a height of more than 10 feet.

“It was certainly from a ship,” he said. “It’s not like a recreational fishing anchor.”

Jack Hutchens, the safety director for the joint team of construction contractors on the bridge-tunnel project, said the anchor appears similar in design to one W.L. Byers began making in 1928.

The tunneling beneath the Chesapeake Bay’s bed has been on hold ever since the anchor was found — and might not resume until February.

Jack Hutchens, Project Safety Director for Chesapeake Tunnel JV, right, and Juan Lopez, Deputy Project Safety Director, stand near the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel expansion on Aug. 25, 2023 near Virginia Beach, Virginia. (Billy Schuerman / The Virginian-Pilot)

The Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel expansion at island one is seen on Aug. 25, 2023 near Virginia Beach, Virginia. (Billy Schuerman / The Virginian-Pilot)

Juan Lopez, Deputy Safety Director, stands in a control room on the Tunnel Boring Machine on Island One of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel on Aug. 25, 2023 near Virginia Beach, Virginia. The machine handles nearly 1000 metric tons of sediment per day as the tunnel is built. (Billy Schuerman / The Virginian-Pilot)

Workers try stand near armor stones above the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel expansion on island one on Aug. 25, 2023 near Virginia Beach, Virginia. (Billy Schuerman / The Virginian-Pilot)

Construction is seen on island two of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel on Aug. 25, 2023 near Virginia Beach, Virginia. (Billy Schuerman / The Virginian-Pilot)

In fact, while there’s lots of other construction work to do in the interim, the anchor snag is projected to postpone the project’s completion by about six months.

That’s on top of several previous delays.

When former Gov. Ralph Northam announced in 2017 that the project had begun, it was expected to be done by August 2022. But several other delays have shifted the completion date to December 2026, more than four years past initial projections. The recent anchor issue has now postponed that to May 2027.

Built in 1964, the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel carries traffic over about 17 miles between Virginia Beach and the state’s Eastern Shore, offering alternative routes between Hampton Roads and points north.

Though the bridge sections now carry two lanes of traffic in each direction, the traffic still converges into one lane each way in the two tunnel portions. In each of those mile-long tunnels, drivers must face cars and trucks coming toward them from the other direction.

But with the $756 million Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel expansion project, a new tube is being added to the system’s southern tunnel. When the project is done, the existing tube and the forthcoming one will each be able to carry two lanes of traffic, with the two tunnels heading in opposite directions.

The northern tunnel is expected to get a similar expansion in the 2030s.

As part of the project, a massive “Tunnel Boring Machine” — boasting a cutter head that’s more than 43 feet in diameter — began making its way below the Thimble Shoal channel in February. The German-made machine, nicknamed “Chessie,” has a rotating series of blades made of tungsten carbide, twice as strong as steel.

As the machine carves out its path, workers are erecting the traffic tunnel just behind it, with a series of rings made of reinforced concrete.

Chessie was about 700 feet along its path — or about 12% into its 5,700-foot journey — when it struck the old ship anchor in May.

It’s not clear exactly how deep under the bay bed the anchor was when it was struck. But the top of the boring machine is about 70 feet below the Chesapeake Bay’s surface: under both 50 feet of water and 20 feet of soil and clay.

Hutchens said workers first noticed “higher pressures than we were anticipating” coming from the machine in late May. “And then we started getting a couple of small pieces onto the conveyor belt. That’s when we knew we were onto something.”

Two small anchor pieces came out May 24, with larger pieces dropping onto the conveyor on May 25 and 31st. The rest of the anchor “is buried in front of the cutter head,” Crist said.

Now, workers must access the cutter’s face to remove the rest of the anchor and fix any broken parts.

If the boring machine were deeper into the ground at the time, he said, a much easier method could be used to access the anchor. There are typically other ways to remove large boulders and other objects the cutter comes across.

But with the cutter only having 20 feet of relatively soft soil above it, workers need to take steps to make the surrounding area solid enough to create a pressurized area for a work space. They have to “grout it and make it solid” and then make “a safe haven” for the workers.

“We actually use air pressure in front of the machine to help hold the water back,” Hutchens said.

“Once they get that grouted — and drive the machine into the grout — they’ll have enough solid earth around them with the ‘grouted plug’ that they can then pressurize it,” Crist said. “And then they’ll go in and get the anchor.”

While they’re there, they’ll inspect the machine and replace any parts that have been damaged. “The anchor potentially could be breaking some of the teeth or damaging some of those cutting disks,” Hutchens said.

How much this will increase the overall cost of the project is still being worked out, said Tom Anderson, the CBBT’s deputy executive director in charge of finance and operations.

Cost increases due to unexpected geological conditions are shared by the CBBT Authority and the project’s contractors, Dragados USA and Schiavone Construction Co. LLC, under cost-sharing provisions of the contract.

“Sometimes when you dig in the earth, you find things that you didn’t expect,” Crist said. “So we’ll deal with it, and then keep going.”

Peter Dujardin, 757-247-4749, [email protected]

Blog