Mountain tunnel project irrigates farmland
On a perfect day for an outdoor celebration, thousands of people gathered at a ceremony in Surkhet, western Nepal, to witness the breakthrough of a 12-kilometer tunnel through the Himalayas on April 16.
Hu Tianran, the 33-year-old manager of the tunnel project, stood beside Nepali Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli when the latter ordered the excavation of the last 40 centimeters of the tunnel.
Hu, of Chengdu, Sichuan province, vividly remembers the moment the boring machine completed the work.
“I felt proud and excited. But more than that, I felt calm,” he said recently. “We had been working hard for this for about four years. But when the moment actually came, what I thought about was the loads of work I would need to take on in the next stage,” said Hu, an employee of a Chinese company that built the project.
The tunnel was made to transfer water from the Bheri River to the Babai River and provide irrigation for 51,000 hectares of farmland in the areas of Banke and Bardiya.
The water diversion will also feed a planned hydropower plant.
Helping address the uneven distribution of water resources in the Himalayan country and its need for electricity, the tunnel was Nepal’s first project to use a tunnel boring machine.
With the 275-meter-long machine, made in Shanghai by a United States-based company, Hu’s team finished tunneling through the mountain within 17 months, completing the project almost a year before the deadline.
That smooth progress, however, came only after the team’s “preparation from scratch”. Before the tunneling began, Hu and his coworkers spent two years building roads, a sand production line, a factory to make supports for the tunnel and other preliminary work.
With help from local authorities, including traffic police, the team overcame challenges posed by narrow, steep and sharply winding mountain roads to ensure machine parts arrived on time, Hu said.
As many as 140 local workers helped build the tunnel at the busiest time, the manager said, and after extensive training and work they became the first in Nepal who know how to operate and maintain a tunnel boring machine.
What was important for ensuring smooth cooperation between Chinese and Nepalese workers, he said, was “mutual understanding and respect”, and “to seek common ground while working together”.
Hu, who used to know little about Nepal, has spent most of the past four years there working on the tunnel project. It is the first foreign country he has worked in.
He said his work in Nepal now includes reviewing the tunnel project and consulting on similar projects. For him, building the tunnel has become a career high point and has helped him better understand the Nepali people.
“They are filled with vigor and aspiration for better lives. The country has great potential and is uniquely charming. I believe Nepal and its people will have a beautiful future,” he said.
They (Nepali people) are filled with vigor and aspiration for better lives. The country has great potential and is uniquely charming. I believe Nepal and its people will have a beautiful future.” Hu Tianran, an employee of a Chinese company that built a water project in Nepal