Now that you've seen these beautiful photos of the city's sandhogs, here's a video of what they do all day. Namely, make things explode. NYC Water just uploaded this video from 2007 of a "Drill and Shoot” excavation at the Croton Water Filtration Plant, which will provide the city with clean drinking water once it is complete. NYC Water explains, "The blasting helped create the raw water tunnel that will bring water from the Croton Watershed in Westchester into the plant for filtration before it makes its way to homeowners' taps in the Bronx and Manhattan." But won't somebody please think of the crustaceans! more ›

Melissa King, who handled management of the Sandhogs union's benefits plan, was charged with embezzling $42 million from those plans! According to the NY Times, federal prosecutors say King, who was paid $540,000/year, funneled the money into accounts she controlled and the money "went toward expenses that appeared to be unrelated to union business, including $7.2 million to American Express, more than $3 million to equestrian businesses and $713,500 to a jewelry business." That equestrian business was to support her teen daughter, a junior champion horse jumper. The Sandhogs are the workers who are building the Third Water Tunnel and are involved in other infrastructure project. King was charged with theft and money laundering; she's out on $10 million bail. more ›

How long have you been a Sandhog?  How did you get started? I started in Oct 1997, so I've been doing this for 11 Years. I grew up with a close friend whose father was the business agent of the union, Local 147, the greatest union in the world. more ›

Tonight, the History Channel will air the first episode of Sandhogs (10 p.m.), its 11-episode series about the workers behind moving the city's big infrastructure projects, like Water Tunnel Number 3 and the 7 Subway Line Extension, along. (Last month, we got a sneak look at some images from the show.) more ›

Starting this September the History Channel will be airing their new series, Sandhogs. The eleven episodes will focus on the people and the projects that maintain New York City's infrastructure, from the past to the present. They say, "For more than 150 years, a legendary band of mostly unknown urban miners has toiled in obscurity far below the streets of New York. They are the builders of water and sewage tunnels, subway systems and bridge footings, and underappreciated elements of the city's infrastructure." more ›