STRUCT URES
Tunnels of Love:
Why They’re Always Digging
The tunnels
have the
added benefit
of keeping
the campus
uncluttered and
quiet above
ground — no
fans or motors
coughing to life,
no wires or
cables threading
through the
branches
of oak trees.
At UNC,
everything that
can be buried
is buried:
steam and
chilled water,
electricity,
water and sewer,
storm water,
telecommun-
ications.
To get here, I have crawled down
one shaky ladder, up another, and
over and around some scalding
pipes. I have made certain promises; I
have sweat through my shirt. Given the
closely guarded and hard-to-access location of the Omega, I wouldn’t be surprised to find the Alpha around here
somewhere, too.
But, alas. All I can see in one direction
is a pitch-black tunnel, six feet tall and
seven feet wide and crammed with pipes
that extend west toward the heart of
campus. Oh, and the Omega loop, right
in front of me. My guide, Bill Lowery,
UNC’s senior mechanical engineer for
cogeneration systems, tells me I’m probably one of the few living people to have
seen one of those. Given that level of
exclusivity, I’d hoped for a slightly more
stirring sight, like the Hanging Gardens
of Babylon. Instead, I’m looking at an
expansion joint — an asbestos-sheathed
stretch of steam pipe, hand-bent in the
shape of the Greek letter by a forgotten
craftsman who worked deep beneath
UNC’s surface in the Depression era.
I peer at it some more, then take a
few steps down into the hot, cramped
confines of the tunnel. I’m trying to
understand what Raymond DuBose,
UNC’s director of energy services, said
when he was explaining his initial resistance to the story idea. “Steam tunnels,”
he said, “are just sexy.”
“Sexy” might be the last word that
comes to mind when Chapel Hillians
think about the University’s two miles
of walk-in tunnels, which deliver steam
and chilled water from the coal-fired
power plant on Cameron Avenue to
points across the campus. If locals think
about these lines at all, it is likely when
they break or threaten to — like the
near-collapse of the old tunnel in spring
2006 that shut down Pittsboro Street an
hour or two before a home basketball
game and disrupted traffic for months
afterward.
COURTESY OF CLANCY & THEYS
But as it turns out, steam tunnels have
an allure to equal their utility. The tunnels
have proven irresistible to those with a
taste for going where they aren’t supposed to, or groups in search of a place to
perform some vaguely cult-like ritual.
Troll the Internet for a few minutes, and
you will find sites dedicated to college
steam tunnels across the nation, some of
which boast stunningly detailed schemat-
This is an excavation
for utilities in a high-growth area just
south of Manning
Drive. But the old
campus isn’t
immune, and there’s
plenty of digging
among the old oaks.
