Navi Mumbai: The first tunnel breakthrough was achieved on Monday in the City and Industrial Development Corporation’s (Cidco) Augmentation of Hetawane Water Supply Scheme to Navi Mumbai at Shaft-4 in Wahal village under Package-1 of the project. The project was executed by Afcons Infrastructure, marking the first tunnel breakthrough in Cidco’s history across all its projects so far. The package included an 8.7 km treated water tunnel, of which 5.52 km of tunnelling work was already completed. Upon completion of the tunnel network, the project will enhance Cidco’s water supply capacity from the existing 150 million litres per day (MLD) to 270 MLD for rapidly growing Navi Mumbai.
Vijay Singhal, vice chairman and managing director of Cidco, said, “A few days ago, we created history with the first flight taking off from the greenfield Navi Mumbai International Airport. Today, we created another historic moment with this first water tunnel breakthrough for our water supply mechanism.” According to Cidco, the entire tunnelling project for the supply of additional water from Hetawane Dam near Pen to Navi Mumbai will be completed by 2029, which will mitigate the hardship of residents. Singhal further added, “I must appreciate Afcons for its speed, quality of work, and for completing the tunnel breakthrough ahead of schedule. I also commend the Afcons executive chairman for committing to complete the remaining project six months ahead of schedule. I urge all other contractors not to seek any extensions and to complete their projects on time or ahead of schedule so that the estimated timeline could be met. The timely completion of the entire scheme will benefit the increasing population of Navi Mumbai.” Krishnamurthy Subramanian, executive chairman of Afcons, who was present at the tunnel site along with Singhal, said, “Despite geological and logistical challenges, we set national tunnelling records by adopting innovative practices. We will complete this project six months ahead of schedule while maintaining the highest safety and quality standards.”Cidco undertook the project to meet the growing water demand in Navi Mumbai’s developing regions. The scheme involved the construction of a 13.25 km raw water tunnel and a 15.4 km treated water tunnel. Earlier in the project, Afcons set a new national tunnelling record by achieving 777 metre of tunnelling in a single month using the 3.2 metre-diameter Tunnel Boring Machine (TBM) Flamingo, and now surpassed its own previous record of 714 metres completed in a month, achieved in May this year.
