BENGALURU: Big companies showing interest in Bengaluru’s Twin Tunnel Road project, have asked Bengaluru Smart Infrastructure Limited (B-SMILE) to take up the responsibility of clearing silt and soil after boring, but the civic body has shot down the proposal. It said the company bagging the tender will have an investment share of 60% under the Build-Own-Operate and Transfer (BOOT) model and will have to deal with it, and the government will only facilitate it.
The 16.75-km tunnel road will take away 40 per cent of traffic from surface roads once completed, says BS Prahallad, Director, B-SMILE. The agencies which took part in the meeting, asked the civic body to extend the technical bid meeting scheduled for September 3. According to Prahallad, the land required for the project is very little, as most of the work is underground, and such projects have already been done in Mumbai, where a 4.5-km tunnel road was built.
“We already have Rs 800 crore, which will be used as compensation for land acquisition, and the team is involved in correspondence between the Ministry of Defence and Government of India, as permission will be required to drill a tunnel below their land,” he said.
While the issue of transporting soil and silt from the tunnel has just begun to crop up, geologists and environmentalists argue that the absence of a plan to move silt and soil may lead to an increase in pollution, as dust particles may get mixed with air during summer, while during the monsoon, the dumped soil will turn into sludge and may run into fields and roads if dumping sites are not identified and handled well.
“There are guidelines for transporting soil and silt. It has to be done in an enclosed system. Before the excavation or boring, a study will have to be conducted to know the weak and strong areas, and corrective measures will have to be taken,” said Professor D Parameshwar Naik, department of Environmental Science, Bengaluru University.