Mumbai: Punctured water tunnel repaired in 18 days, residents' woes to end ‘next week’

The repair work of the water tunnel that got punctured in Thane has been completed in 18 days, claimed the civic official on Tuesday. The BMC will now divert the supply to the original pipeline which will take another 3 to 4 days. People facing a 15% water cut from the last three weeks will get relief by next week, the civic body said.

The 15km long water tunnel that brings 75% of water to the Bhandup Complex for supply to the city was punctured by the workers of a developer during the drilling of a borewell at Wagale Estate. It later came to light that the tunnel was actually punctured in November 2022. The BMC diverted the water supply to the old defunct line and started the work on March 31.

BMC explains what went wrong

The civic authority imposed a 15% water cut in the city and suburbs during this period. A civic body official said, “The water tunnel is about 100 to 125meter underground and the damaged point was 4.2km away from Bhandup Shaft. We had to first make alternate arrangements for the supply of the city. Later, several litres of water were completely pumped out from the tunnel, lighting and ventilation arrangements were made for the engineers and workers for fixing the leakage. The contractor was instructed to arrange and keep ready all the equipment, machinery and manpower at the site.”

Additional Municipal Commissioner (projects) P Velrasu said, “The tunnel re-commissioning process will require about 3-4 day's time and the supply is expected to be normal from April 23.”

Both the domes at Bhandup and Kapurbawdi were cut and removed with the help of a crane. Later, engineers and workmen went inside the tunnel to close the borehole by inserting packing material and injecting grout to control water leakage. The borewell was later grouted with cement from the outside and all the machinery, pumps and equipment were removed.