ABSTRACT
Greater Beirut area has been suffering from shortages in potable water for the last forty years with absence of environmental and water management strategies. The Greater Beirut Water Supply Project aims to overcome this shortage by conveying potable water from a hydroelectric power station near the village of Joun, 30 km south of Beirut, to Hadath reservoirs in the Greater Beirut area, in a sustainable way, by using the TBM excavation technology. Three tunnels of 23.26 km total length will be excavated using two Open Gripper TBMs of d=3.5m with an inverted syphon and a 10 km of twin pipeline. The mucking material from tunnel excavation will be reused as a backfilling for the pipeline. The project: phase 1 (GBWSP) and phase 2 (Bisri Dam Construction), whenever finish, will provide an average volume of 500,000 cum/d of potable water for approximately 1.9 million Lebanese living in Greater Beirut area.
