Once all the plugs were out, the MWRA began the slow process of flooding the tunnel. Workers used treated sewer water277 to do it, opening up the gates to the enormous chlorination basins that had been built near the shaft. When the tunnel was 90 percent full, the manhole cover was put back in place over riser number 3, the steel straw and vent pipes were removed, and the dome was returned to the top of the diffuser head. When the tunnel was completely full, Kozlowski and the rest of his team made a series of dives to remove the sturdy nylon caps from those sprinkler nozzles on the diffuser heads. The divers managed to yank them off with nothing more than a sledgehammer.
On September 6, 2000, Doug MacDonald finally got his opening ceremony for the tunnel, standing alongside Judge Mazzone and other dignitaries. Just before noon, the treated sewer water was officially rerouted from Boston Harbor to begin its 9.5-mile journey deep into the ocean. With that, the cloudy harbor waters began to clear.
The innovative “crazy idea” vent operation had gone better than anyone could have expected. The MWRA’s engineers had estimated that once free air was restored in the tunnel, it would take the sandhogs three weeks to remove the remaining fifty-two plugs, an estimate that Kiewit’s lawyer had suggested was wildly optimistic. In the end, it took only about three days278. Still, the operation hadn’t come cheap. While Norwesco’s original bid to send in the divers had been under $600,000, the price tag for this vent solution was twenty-five times that figure, clocking in at $15 million279.
Before MacDonald and the other dignitaries celebrated during the opening ceremony, they observed a moment of silence for Billy and Tim, as well as for the three workers killed earlier in the decade-long harbor cleanup project. During periods of deep reflection,
MacDonald found himself wondering what would have happened if the tunnel had taken the lives of DJ, Riggs, and Hoss in addition to Billy and Tim. If none of those divers had emerged on that awful day, MacDonald knew there was a chance that no one would have been let back into the tunnel, and the mystery of what had happened would never have been solved. He could imagine the questions people would be asking: Did the tunnel collapse? Did the divers drown? Was there a fire? Was there some of kind of sea monster? “I mean,” he said, “how would you have ever known?”
MacDonald was relieved to be able to put the throbbing questions behind him. This engineering marvel of a tunnel was finally done, and one of the most ambitious environmental cleanup efforts in the nation’s history had finally reached the finish line.
But others in Boston were still on the hunt for answers. Less than a week after the ceremony, the woman who had taken charge of the investigation into the diver deaths submitted a seven-page, singlespaced memo to her superiors. Although the investigation was far from complete, she detailed stunning allegations of malfeasance, of mistakes both cosmically complicated and unforgivably simple. Someone had to be held to account.
14. Justice
For Mary McCauley, the most memorable interview of the investigation took place just two days after Billy and Tim had died. That’s when the state police detective found herself in a construction trailer on Deer Island with Harald Grob. By then, she had already heard plenty of complaints from the divers about the controlling Canadian engineer and project manager. But now that she was sitting across from him, she was surprised to find a relatively soft-spoken man.
Working alongside McCauley and her state police partner on the probe were several investigators from OSHA. The arrangement was something of a shotgun wedding between agencies since McCauley had never met the lead investigator, Elena Finizio, or her colleagues from the federal workplace safety agency. Even the job title on Finizio’s business card—“industrial hygienist”—sounded strange to McCauley, like a description of someone who cleaned giant teeth. Regardless, the detective was relieved to be able to turn to people who knew a lot more about tunnels than she did.
Given her own lack of technical knowledge, McCauley felt it would be better to let the OSHA rep take the lead in questioning Harald, who had his lawyer beside him. McCauley mainly kept quiet while taking detailed notes and making sure her cassette recorder continued to roll, so that Harald’s every word would be captured on tape.
Yet McCauley couldn’t resist drawing a few conclusions about him. She sensed that for all his intelligence, Harald wasn’t nearly as bright as he seemed to believe he was. The clues came early on in the interview. Knowing that on his resume and in his conversations with project officials, Harald had claimed previous experience using mixed-gas systems, OSHA’s Finizio asked him to elaborate280.
Q: What type of mixed air systems have you used?
A: There is a group of us who took mixed gas diving, which is helium and oxygen. And we’ve been using, over the course of five years now, a nitrox system, which is an oxygen and nitrogen mixture.
Although Harald presented this mixed-gas experience, which presumably began with some kind of training course, as evidence of his familiarity with the system he was using on Deer Island, the OSHA investigator’s follow-up question indicated she was dubious:
Q: So it’s in a gas form as opposed to liquid?
A: Yes.
Q: Have you ever used a liquid oxygen and nitrogen mixed air system?
A: No.
McCauley had just begun her study into the field. Yet she’d already learned that there was a world of difference between breathing the vapors of liquid gases you’d mix yourself, in as inhospitable an environment as the mind could conjure, and breathing gas that had been premixed and pretested. She felt that for Harald to have implied otherwise was like a guy confidently getting behind the wheel of a school bus full of children even though he’d never driven anything bigger than a station wagon.
The OSHA investigator asked Harald to explain the procedures for using handheld analyzers to test the oxygen in the breathing supply, pressing him for how those measurements could possibly have been accurate. After all, he’d told the divers to hold the analyzer in front of an open valve of breathing air that couldn’t help but blend with the ambient air. McCauley noticed how abruptly Harald’s manner seemed to change when he was challenged. “It’s certainly accurate281,” he huffed.
Several times, in answer to questions about apparent deficiencies in the system, he responded that the protocols he’d given the divers were “industry practice.” But after the investigators probed further, he was forced to acknowledge that the whole mission had been too experimental for industry practice to have played a role.
In at least one regard, McCauley was impressed by Harald. Rather than run away from responsibility for the design of the system, he owned up to a big chunk of it. “I was the person who wrote the schematics, the requirements for the system,” he said. The OSHA investigator drilled a bit deeper, asking, “Who was the one that was in charge of designing the other aspects, the vehicles to go out there, communications, monitoring?” Harald didn’t equivocate. “Me,” he replied.
He stressed that he’d had help from his Spokane supplier, A-L Compressed Gases, in securing equipment and that he’d received considerable feedback from the other players in the project. “Between MWRA and Kiewit and ourselves and our people,” he said, “we went through it, proposals back and forth, and revisions back and forth.” But even with his lawyer sitting next to him and steely-eyed cops sitting across the table from him, Harald did not try to absolve himself of responsibility for the system’s design.
278 (Chapter 13, note 26)
took only about three days: “Removing Safety Caps,”
279 (Chapter 13, note 27)
clocking in at $15 million: Walter Armstrong and Ralph Wallace, interviews by author, 2010. See also the July 21, 2000, issue of
280 (Chapter 14, note 1)
OSHA’s Finizio asked him to elaborate: Trooper Mary T. McCauley, “Interview of Harald Grob,” Massachusetts State Police Suffolk County Detective Unit, January 7, 2000. In addition to Finizio, industrial hygienist Maria-Lisa Abundo was also heavily involved in the investigation for OSHA.