Book Spotlight: Trapped Under the Sea

Trapped under the Sea: One Engineering Marvel Five Men, and a Disaster Ten Miles into the Darkness
 
by Neil Swidey

The harrowing story of five men who were sent into a dark, airless, miles-long tunnel, hundreds of feet below the ocean, to do a nearly impossible job with deadly results. Twenty five years ago, Boston had the dirtiest harbor in America. The city had been dumping sewage into it for generations, coating the seafloor with a layer of "black mayonnaise." Fisheries collapsed, wildlife fled, and locals referred to floating tampon applicators as "beach whistles.

 In the 1990s, work began on a state-of-the-art treatment plant and a 10-mile-long tunnel,its endpoint stretching farther from civilization than the earth's deepest ocean trench, to carry waste out of the harbor. With this impressive feat of engineering, Boston was poised to show the country how to rebound from environmental ruin. But when bad decisions and clashing corporations endangered the project, a team of commercial divers was sent on a perilous mission to rescue the stymied cleanup effort. 

   What is the true cost of these large-scale construction projects, as designers and builders, emboldened by new technology and pressured to address a growing population's rapacious needs, push the limits of the possible? This is a story about human risk how it is calculated, discounted, and transferred and the institutional failures that can lead to catastrophe.  

Tyson