A 26-km water pipe that is meant to be the city’s insurance against dry days will be laid under BT Road without disrupting traffic in any way.

Municipal commissioner Alapan Bandyopadhyay said Rites, a central government enterprise, had been chosen for the project and that work would begin after Puja 2008. “It will be completed in 35 months.”

The municipal commissioner and the chief project director of Rites, B.K Makhija, surveyed the pipeline route, along with a team of engineers, on Monday.

The team decided to use the “trenchless micro-tunnelling method” to ensure that the six-km stretch from Parkside Road to Sodepur and the seven-km stretch between Dunlop Bridge and Tallah pumping station are free of traffic snarls.

The pipeline will be the second one between Tallah pumping station and Palta waterworks.

The city receives 260 million gallons of filtered water daily through the main pipeline, which is over 80 years old and leaks at several places.