Mumbai:
With monsoon now finally over, all the agencies have started digging up roads for work on their projects. But while work on excavating the roads has been going on, underground pipelines have faced the brunt of mishaps happening during work.
In the last 24 hours, two pipelines were broken -- one in Parel and the other at Arthur Road -- at the hands of contractors appointed by the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) for these works, resulting in more water woes for the citizens.
The pipeline near the Golanjee Hill reservoir at GD Ambekar road in Parel got broken at 9.30pm on Wednesday. It was one of the main pipelines and supplied water to many of the nearby areas. The BMC's hydraulic department rushed to the spot and stopped the supply. Repair work has been started on it.
The other incident took place in a few hours of the previous one, on Thursday morning at Arthur Road. It happened when the excavation work was going on the road for the Metro rail, which is supposed to start from Gadge Maharaj Chowk (Jacob Circle).
Local corporator Chandarkant Pugaonkar noticed the leakage. He immediately warned the workers on the spot that there might be a pipeline burst.
The workers stopped the excavation of the road.
The burst pipeline is six inches in diameter and connected to the main pipeline. To fix the leak, civic officials have put a wooden plug.
This year, from January to May, saw more than 32 water pipelines bursting, while last year, 65 incidents of water pipeline bursts took place.
According to the BMC's hydraulic engineer, one leakage costs the city at least six million litres of water in a day.
The contractors engaged by MMRDA to construct the monorail and Metro rail allegedly kept breaking the pipelines after every 20 days last year. With the city already reeling under the water crisis in 2009, these bursts added to citizens' water woes.
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