Ooty: Soil erosion during heavy rains along the Ooty-Emerlad road is continuing to be a worrisome factor as the piling of eroded soil on the road proving to be troublesome for traffic. Greens are calling for measures to arrest such erosion and make arrangements for terrace cultivation along the slopes there to check erosion.
Stating that whenever there is heavy downpour, there is always widespread soil erosion in the Ooty-Emerald road, especially in the Muthorai, Ithalar and Emerald limits, V. Sivadass, managing trustee of Nilgiris Environment and Socio-cultural Trust, said that it was due to incorrect and faulty agriculture land use pattern on the upper slopes.
The problem ensues from a trend over the years of terrace cultivation system designed for deep slopes having been ignored in vegetable farm lands along the slopes around the Ooty-Emerald road. That is why there is large scale soil erosion during heavy rains in this road.
“Terrace cultivation system for farm lands in the slopes, especially the vegetable growing areas, in Nilgiris is so designed to have proper channels, retaining walls and silt-collection pits that checksoil erosion. But, now-a-days, this type of hill-friendly and eco-friendly cultivation method is not being followed and farmers simply make cultivation in the slopes as such. So, during heavy rains, the fragile upper soil along the slopes erodes, gets washed away and is deposited over the road. Thus bringing extra burden to the highways as they need to sweat it
out to remove the deposited soil on the road to pave way for traffic”, he
noted.
Not only that, the eroded soil would slowly clog the culverts and streams nearby. It is high time to appoint a local level expert committee to study the faults in the agriculture lands along the slopes and to take corrective steps, he pleaded.
S. Jayachandran, joint secretary of Tamil Nadu Green Movement, noted that the Highways department while widening the roads should also focus attention on avoiding vertical cuts along the slopes and instead go for slanting-cut model as it would help check soil erosion on the roadsides.
