This admission shockingly comes seven years after the Rs 57-crore pipeline was commissioned in July 2000 and after a whopping Rs 14 crore has been spent on buying additional water from the Mutha open canal.

The administration now plans to rectify the design faults and has called official bids for appointing technical consultants for the rectification. During these seven years, the civic body has consistently defended the design of the pipeline and has instead alleged that the pipeline was forced to carry less water as the irrigation department was not maintaining the required water levels in the Khadakwasla dam.

The pipeline was designed to draw 11.5 thousand million cubic (TMC) feet of untreated water per year from the dam. However, the actual water drawn has always been around 8.5 TMC. The remaining 2.5 to 3 TMC was being taken from the Mutha open canal, for which the civic body was paying the irrigation department thrice the normal water lifting charges, amounting to over Rs 14 crore till now.

The 11.5-km-long and 3,030-diameter pipeline was laid to draw water from the Khadakwasla dam to the Parvati water works (PWW) on Sinhagad road. It is still considered the biggest water supply project executed by the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) in Pune city as it assures uninterrupted supply of raw water from the dam to the city. The dam water is treated at the PWW before being pumped to the city for drinking purposes.

The pipeline project was undertaken after the canal had breached in 1996, cutting off Pune's water supply for a week. Also, the canal, which is open to sky, gets polluted as people wash utensils, clothes and even dump garbage into it.