Service order issued for continuation of the Alagoas Sertão Canal

On Thursday (9/5), the President of the Republic signed the service order for the start of work on section 5 of the Alagoas Sertão Canal, to be built between km 123.4 and 150, in the municipalities of São José da Tapera, Olho D’Água das Flores and Monteirópolis. The work has been included in the new PAC and shall have a mandatory transfer of funds. The project is part of the Federal Government’s Water for All Program. OEC will carry out the work in consortium with TPF Engenharia.

The OEC had already delivered section 4 of the Sertão Canal in 2021. For section 5, the Consortium was contracted to draw up the executive engineering projects, supply materials and equipment and carry out the civil works for the implementation of a 26.6-kilometer stretch. More than 800 jobs are expected to be created at the peak of the project, using primarily local labor.

Around 130 pieces of heavy equipment shall be used in the work. With the completion of section 5, the Sertão Alagoano Canal shall be 150 kilometers long. At the end of the project, the largest water infrastructure project in Alagoas and one of the largest in Brazil, shall be 250 kilometers long, reaching the city of Arapiraca and benefiting more than one million people in 46 cities in the sertão and agreste of Alagoas.

Engineering Challenge

One of the major engineering challenges for the project shall be the construction of the third tunnel, 1.5 kilometers long, with rock mass classes ranging from II to V – the scale varies from I (hardest) to V (least hard). The tunnel shall be excavated using the N.A.T.M. method. (New Austrian Tunnelling Method) Drill & Blast, with advance according to the class of massif mapped by the A.T.O. team. (Technical Work Monitoring), with the respective treatments provided for in the executive project. The project includes specific treatments for each type of massif, with the application of shotcrete, metal reinforcement (mesh), tie rods, cambers and short drains. Due to the characteristics of the rock in the initial sections of the tunnel’s embankment and unembankment and in order to ensure greater safety and stability, self-piercing enfilades shall be carried out in sections with low rock cover.

The project will include the construction of 20 kilometers of concrete-lined trapezoidal canal; a 1.5-kilometer tunnel; a 1.5-kilometer inverted siphon; four one-kilometer-long canal bridges, as well as three floodgates.