CIDCO’s Historic Breakthrough: Light at the End of the Tunnel

CIDCO achieved a major milestone in the augmentation of the Hetawane Water Supply Scheme on 29 December 2025, with the successful first tunnel breakthrough at Shaft-4 in Wahal village. This marks the first tunnel breakthrough in CIDCO’s history.

The breakthrough was recorded under Water Tunnel Package-1, which is being executed by Afcons Infrastructure. The package comprises an 8.7 km-long treated water tunnel, of which 5.52 km of tunnelling work has already been completed. The overall Hetawane augmentation project is aimed at meeting the rising water demand of Navi Mumbai’s fast-growing areas and includes the construction of a 13.25 km raw water tunnel and a 15.4 km treated water tunnel.

Once completed, the project will enhance CIDCO’s water supply capacity from the existing 120 million litres per day (MLD) to 270 MLD.

Afcons Infrastructure has also set a national tunnelling benchmark during the project by achieving 777 metres of tunnelling in a single month using the tunnel boring machine (TBM) Flamingo, surpassing its earlier record of 714 metres

News by Rahul Yelligetti.

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