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For about three months it munched away, creating a storm-sewer pathway to help flood-proof homes in the area. But, just seven metres short of the exit shaft, it snagged on steel wires left underground from nearby condo foundation work.

In March, city staff, while telling the Star about a $9-million plan to rescue the trapped digger, said it got stuck after its cutter head chewed the wires into a “bunch of spaghetti” wrapped around the machine.

But on Monday, a city committee heard that the cost of the rescue plan has ballooned by $16 million to about $25 million. The machine was supposed to be rescued in April, allowing completion of the new storm sewer, but it will remain stuck underground until at least the end of August.

“It’s a mess,” the local councillor, Gord Perks, told colleagues on the government services committee. Residents are fed up with traffic disruptions and blocked driveways, he added, but “I don’t want anyone to leave the room thinking that city staff have done anything but 110 per cent on managing this crisis since it started.”

Judy Tse, the city’s interim chief engineer, said workers for Earth Boring Co., subcontracted by prime contractor Clearway Construction Ltd., met unexpected hazards while using shovels and a hydraulic jack to dig from the exit shaft to the machine.

More construction wires, wet and unstable ground that triggered dangerous sinkholes, and the flow of groundwater into the rescue tunnel have required extraordinary measures to firm up the soil and make it safe for workers to disassemble the five-metre digger and pull it out the exit shaft, Tse said.

The contractor and a city-hired consultant came up with the $16-million figure for extra costs to complete the contract, states that includes staffing the project for months longer than expected and the firm’s inability to use the digger on other projects.

The financial hit comes as the city’s pandemic-ravaged budget has a $1.5-billion hole for last year and this year. The flood-proofing cost overrun, however, will be paid out of pc28����Water’s budget that is funded through water use charges.

The city legal department is seeing if it can take action to get the contractor to help fund the cost overruns. Clearway did not respond to a Star request for comment.

Although Perks assured other councillors that the city has learned valuable lessons on how to not repeat such pricey mishaps, Coun. Paula Fletcher said it may be time to halt the rescue and walk away from the buried borer.

“Leave it there,” the Toronto-Danforth representative said. “When you dig up ancient Rome, we see all the things they’re finding. Someday, somebody will find that” digger under Old Mill Road.

Committee members voted unanimously, however, to continue with the rescue as planned after Tse warned that abandoning the machine would be the costliest option due to ongoing requirements for a new tunnel and work to solidify the ground.

Coun. James Pasternak, chair of the committee, concluding debate by remarking: “Something tells me we haven’t heard the last of this.”