The Nashik Municipal Corporation has floated a tender worth about Rs 9.82 crore to break up a rock formation inside Gangapur Dam so that roughly 600 million cubic feet of water sitting in the reservoir’s dead storage can reach the city’s intake well. The civic body has set a pre-bid meeting for September 3, a bid deadline of September 21 and tender opening on September 22, with the work due to finish by the end of March, the Free Press Journal reported on Sunday.

Water Nashik owns but cannot reach

Dead storage is the part of a reservoir that sits below the level at which water can flow out on its own. At Gangapur, water below the 598-metre mark stops reaching the jackwell, the structure that feeds the city’s treatment plants. Engineers have long wanted to cut a channel through the middle of the reservoir bed to guide that water towards the intake. A large rock formation sits in the way.

The volume matters. Nashik holds a reservation of about 6,400 MCFt across Gangapur, Mukane and Darna, and lifts close to 600 million litres a day for the city. Gangapur alone carries around four-fifths of that load. The 600 MCFt locked below the outlet works out to roughly a month of supply for a city of over 20 lakh people.

The third run at the same rock

Nashik has been here before. During the 2024 shortage, the plan to dig the trench stalled after the model code of conduct for the Lok Sabha elections held up the appointment of a survey consultant, and the corporation fell back on a 2016 contingency plan of pumping dead storage to the jackwell with electric pumps. The city was then down to two weeks of usable stock.

The idea returned this summer. In May, with a delayed monsoon and reserves projected to run out weeks before the rains, a consultant put the cost of the channel work at about Rs 14.50 crore, Pudhari reported. The Rs 9.82-crore tender now on the table covers the rock-breaking component, so the two figures describe overlapping rather than identical scopes. Residents will not know the real price until bids open on September 22.

The engineering caution behind the delay explains a lot. Gangapur is an earthen dam. Officials have avoided conventional detonator blasting near its body because of the risk to the embankment, and the corporation’s own engineers have said any rock removal has to use methods that leave the structure alone. That constraint, more than the money, is why a problem identified a decade ago is still a tender notice.

What it changes for households

A month of extra buffer does not add a drop to Nashik’s annual entitlement. What it buys is time in the specific situation that has hurt the city before: a monsoon that arrives late, with the reservoir still holding water that no pump can reach. Nashik households have lived through 48-hour cuts and tanker dependence in those weeks. If the blasting works, the corporation gains room to stretch supply instead of imposing rationing at short notice.

The deadline behind all of this is the Simhastha Kumbh Mela in 2027, when the Nashik-Trimbakeshwar region expects visitors in the crores. The corporation has already commissioned the 274-MLD Vilholi treatment plant, built at about Rs 370 crore and part-funded through green bonds, and inaugurated by Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis as part of the Simhastha build-out. Treatment capacity, though, only matters if raw water reaches the intake.

What to watch

• Whether bids arrive by September 21, and at what price against the Rs 9.82-crore estimate.
• Whether the March completion target holds, which would put the channel in place before the summer of 2027 rather than after it.
• Whether the state irrigation department sanctions the additional Simhastha reservation the corporation is counting on, since several pilgrim-facing water schemes depend on it.

Nashik goes into 2027 with treatment capacity it did not have five years ago. The harder question is whether the corporation can lift what the dams already hold.

Sources: Free Press Journal, Pudhari, Lokmat Times

This report was compiled and written with AI assistance from publicly reported sources, and reviewed for accuracy.