In a significant step, the first phase of the sewer tunnel project, part of the Mithi River Rejuvenation Project, achieved breakthrough at the Kurla Garden, the BMC announced here on Tuesday.
With a diameter of 2.60 metres, this is the smallest sewage tunnel in India, and is being bored 15 metres underground to divert the sewerage and enhance the quality of the Mithi River.
The work on the tunnel, which will be dug for a total length of around 6.70 km from the Bapat Nala and the Safed Pul Nala to the Dharavi Sewage Treatment Plant, with five shafts, started in October 2021 and will be completed by September 2025.
With the first phase of the 1.83 kms tunnel – boring for which started in November 2022 at the DSTP – done on Tuesday, the project is now described as “43 per cent complete”, according to the BMC.
Around 168 million litres of contaminated water flowing into the Mithi River from the two Nalas will now be diverted through the new underground sewage tunnel to the DSTP, thus making the city’s main river cleaner.
The sewage will be treated at the DSTP and released into the creek at the Mahim Nature Park, the BMC said.
Now, the BMC will take up the 1.80-km-long tunnel second phase from Kurla Garden to SCLR Junction to Sahar-Kurla Road, and the third phase for the 3.10 kms long tunnel will start from SCLR Junction to Bapat Nala.
When completed, the total carrying capacity of the 6.70 kms long tunnel will be 400 mld, which will be diverted to the DSTP and help improve the water in Mithi River.
Old-timers recall how the Mithi River, which flows out of the Sanjay Gandhi National Park with branches at Bandra, Oshiwara, Kandivali and Dahisar had clean water teeming with fish almost till the early and mid-1980s.
Some scenic spots on the Dahisar and Kandivali rivers were also shooting locales for old Bollywood films and song sequences.
It was during the 1980s, owing to unchecked developmental activities, burgeoning population, and mushrooming slums along these water bodies that they were reduced to stinking gutters and now after over four decades, are sought to be revived.
Incidentally, these erstwhile life-giver rivers had become killers during the great flood of Mumbai on July 26, 2005.
That day, large parts of the city were practically submerged for days following a record 37.2 inches rainfall notched in 24 hours, after which the Mumbai rivers’ cleaning and revival projects were taken up.
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