OMAHA, Neb.

A big breakthrough for Omaha's sewer separation project took place Saturday when a giant tunnel-boring machine drilled through a shaft in Heartland America Park. This moves one of the city's newest sewer mains forward, after some major setbacks and big costs.

"It's a big relief seeing this tunnel machine show up today," said Scott Aurit, the project delivery team lead for the Clean Solutions for Omaha program.

The tunnel 80 feet under Heartland America Park is just a small piece of the massive CSO project, which is aimed at reducing waste from flowing into the Missouri River.

In December 2015, construction workers began digging the 3,500-foot tunnel, starting near Sixth and Leavenworth and working toward the northeast corner of Heartland America Park.

Work came to a halt in May 2016 when the tunnel-boring machine got stuck underground.

"Our machine that was designed to go through rock was unable to continue tunneling because we started encountering boulders and also ground water conditions," Aurit said.

The hiccup cost the city an additional $2.5 million, bringing the portion of the CSO project to more than $30 million and pushing the completion date back by a year.

"The contractors have done a really good job working diligently and we've been maintaining the schedule to complete this by the end of the year," Aurit said.

Workers built a new shaft to reach the trapped drill and brought in a bigger and better tunnel-boring machine. They started working from the opposite direction, and Saturday nearly finished drilling the 900 feet of the tunnel that the old machine couldn't.

With the new machine reaching the shaft, the current phase of the project is almost complete. Next, workers will install another pipe, test it and hope to start operation by October or November.

"Replacing our aging and our old infrastructure as well as maximizing," Aurit said. "We want to try and get as much flow to the Missouri River treatment plant for treatment."

While the new machine reached the shaft Saturday, it still has a little ways to go. It only moves about five feet every hour.

Workers will also remove the machine that's stuck sometime next week.

The total cost of the CSO project is $2.2 billion.

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Big progress for new sewage pipe project in Heartland America Park - KETV Omaha