Photos: Inside the Waller Creek Tunnel

On Saturday, members of the media were invited to check progress on the Waller Creek tunnel, currently being burrowed some 70 feet underground.

When finished, the tunnel will stretch just over a mile from Waterloo Park to an outlet at Lady Bird Lake. The tunnel will create a steady flow for Waller Creek, and inlets along the creek will prevent water from overflowing, pulling 1 million square feet of developable land out of the 100-year floodplain downtown.

A design competition plotting the future of the Waller Creek area is unfolding alongside the tunnel excavation.

The contractor has completed excavating a 26 foot-wide vertical shaft at Fourth Street and is currently tunneling both north and south. So far, approximately 1,300 feet of the tunnel have been excavated.

KUT News freelancer Jeff Heimsath shot these photos of the tunnel and construction site this weekend.