Mumbai: The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) will spend a whopping Rs 73 crore on the construction of retaining walls near the water pipelines to protect them from encroachments. The civic body will construct the wall at four places — Powai, Ghatkopar, Kurla and Sion-Dharavi — at the total cost of Rs 73 crore.
Hearing a public litigation, the high court in 2006 had asked the civic body to remove encroachments around pipelines, stating that they are posing threat to the security and also causing water contamination. Accordingly, the BMC had filed an affidavit promising HC to remove slum encroachments within 10 metres from both sides of water pipelines. In 2009, the HC had again slammed the BMC for its failure to protect the water pipelines from encroachments. Following this, a high-level civic committee had proposed a four-phase programme for removing hutments within 10 metres of the main pipelines.
To protect the vacant land after removing the encroachments, the BMC decided to construct a retaining wall near the water pipelines. “At some places the wall has already been constructed after removing encroachments, whereas at others, the work of constructing the wall is in progress,” said a senior civic official.
Accordingly, the BMC has decided to construct a retaining wall near water pipelines at Bhandup (from NITIE Gate – Powai to Jogeshwari-Vikhroli Link Road), Ghatkopar (from Parsekar Chowk to Khandoba Tekdi, Katodipada), Kurla and Sion. The works have been allotted to M/s JS Infratech (Rs 7.26 crore), M/s Acute Design (Rs 8 crore), M/s DB Infratech (Rs 35 crore) and M/s Dev Engineers (Rs 22.78 crore) respectively.
“The work involves construction of a cement concrete retaining wall near the water pipelines on land vacated upon removal of encroachments. The height of wall will also be increased by laying barbed wires on them to further prevent encroachments,” said a senior civic official.
