Water Floor to Ceiling for more than a Mile in Tunnels

A 2011 New York state study estimated it would take three days to drain the Hugh L. Carey Tunnel between Brooklyn and the Battery in Lower Manhattan if it was flooded in a major storm. It’s already been four days. The tunnel is filled floor to ceiling for more than a mile -- an estimated 86 million gallons (326 million liters) of water -- in its two tubes
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"Floor to Ceiling for more than a mile!" That means that the only way to get the pumps pumping in this area might be extremely dangerous of sending SCUBA divers into the dark to assemble the bottom sections of pipe in the lowest fully filled sections of the tunnel.

However, what I likely would do to increase safety would be to just drain from the edge of where it was floor to ceiling and keep moving the main pipes and pump closer as the ceilings cleared of water. Though you might keep losing your water prime, losing a SCUBA diver under there would be worse!

If you are a SCUBA DIVER, 1 mile with no where to go for air in an emergency could be a fatality in a real emergency! 

note: (I got my SCUBA License when I was 14 at Catalina Island 26 miles off of Los Angeles and Long Beach, California in the Pacific Ocean).