MTA Gets the Dirt Out

Nepal has Mt. Everest. Tanzania has Mt. Kilimanjaro. And North Hollywood has Mt. Kajima.

The huge dirt pile was nicknamed after Kajima/Ray Wilson, the construction company that has dug up about 175,000 cubic yards of clean fill at the site of the Metropolitan Transit Authority’s subway station project beneath Lankershim and Chandler boulevards.

About 100,000 cubic yards of the dirt will be used to backfill the area around the North Hollywood subway station currently under construction, said MTA spokeswoman Mary Ann

Maskery. The remaining 75,000 cubic yards, she said, will be used for other Kajima projects, some of which will be built for MTA.

Mt. Kajima will likely vanish from the San Fernando Valley skyline within a year, Maskery said.

In a related operation, crews are using a boring machine to slice through the rocky base of the Santa Monica Mountains between Hollywood and Universal City.

The boring machine is outfitted with razor-sharp metal spheres that cut into the mountain as the machine moves forward, Maskery said.

The rocky debris flows from the boring machine along a conveyor belt and is loaded into muck boxes that are pulled up from the tunnel through a shaft by a muck hoist. The debris is then loaded onto trucks and taken to city landfills, she said, where it is used to cover refuse.

Construction crews have traversed south about 9,500 feet from the opening of the tunnel at Universal City, Maskery said. At its deepest point, the tunnel is about 1,000 feet beneath the Santa Monica Mountains.