"Infrastructure Milestone: CIDCO completes the first tunnel breakthrough for the Hetawane water supply project."

The City and Industrial Development Corporation (Cidco) marked a historic milestone recenly with the first tunnel breakthrough in its Augmentation of Hetawane Water Supply Scheme at Shaft-4 in Wahal village, part of Package-1 of the project. Executed by Afcons Infrastructure, this is the first tunnel breakthrough in Cidco’s history across all its projects.

The project includes an 8.7 km treated water tunnel, of which 5.52 km has already been completed. Once the tunnel network is fully operational, Cidco’s water supply capacity will increase from 150 million litres per day (MLD) to 270 MLD, addressing the needs of 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.” He added that the entire tunnelling project, which supplies additional water from Hetawane Dam near Pen to Navi Mumbai, is expected to be completed by 2029, easing water scarcity for residents.

Singhal also lauded Afcons for completing the tunnel breakthrough ahead of schedule and encouraged other contractors to meet or beat project timelines.

Krishnamurthy Subramanian, Executive Chairman of Afcons, noted, “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.”

The overall scheme involves constructing a 13.25 km raw water tunnel and a 15.4 km treated water tunnel. Afcons had earlier set a national tunnelling record by completing 777 metres in a single month using the 3.2-metre diameter Tunnel Boring Machine (TBM) Flamingo, surpassing its previous record of 714 metres achieved in May this year.

This milestone represents a significant step in enhancing Navi Mumbai’s water infrastructure to meet the demands of its growing population.