Tree felling for road widening worries NGOs

Environmentalists urge Gadkari to adopt green Swiss technology to construct stretches

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Kuldeep Chauhan

Tribune News Service

Shimla, June 16

Environmentalists have asked Union Minister for Surface Transport and National Highways Nitin Gadkari to adopt the “green road-construction technology" as is a norm in Switzerland to construct the proposed 29 national highways. Otherwise, construction may create environmental havoc as widening of roads will mean chopping of lakhs of green trees and production of mountains of debris, they warn.

“The experience from the construction of the two ongoing fourlane highway projects — the Parwanoo-Shimla and Kiratpur-Nerchowk section — has been rather bitter," rued Kulbhushan Upmanyu, an environmentalist and president, Himalayan Niti Abhiyan (HNA), an NGO.

“There are no proper dumping sites and no efforts are being made to reclaim the barren land along the highways through plantation,” resented the HNA. “Even the National Green Tribunal has pulled up the NHAI for dumping debris into khuds,” the NGO observed.

The scale of destruction could be frightening following upgrade of 29 roads of over 2,400-km length. It would mean large-scale chopping of green trees for widening the roads as was being done in the ongoing two road projects, he said.

"The best way to avoid the degradation of the hills was to adopt the Switzerland’s green technology to cut the fragile hill slopes, not allowing even a small stone falling downstream into rivers or khuds,” he advocated.

Under this green technology, the dumping sites are those which are barren or wasteland. “These sites are reclaimed by dumping road debris there. Then follows greening of the land by both grass and plants”, he said.

"No vertical cutting of the hill is allowed. The hill is cut at a repose angle rather than at a vertical angle to check the landslide and soil erosion," Upmanyu said.

This natural drainage should be channelled through small culverts rather than collecting them into a big culvert that results in flash flood and soil erosion downstream, NGOs suggested.

Upmanyu cited examples of proper road drainage set up by the British in Nurpur on the Shimla-Kalka railway Unesco heritage track and in Dalhousie. They did not disturb the natural drains and collect water upstream and guide it downstream properly in Dalhiouse, Pathankot, Kotla Balah village in Nurpur, he added.

He said they had implemented green technology in a 12-hectare barren land in Rasein village Bhatiyaar in Chamba. “We have raised 200 rare oak trees along with other plants in the barren land, which now are three feet high,” he added.