The Lakya dam built to trap waste iron tailings of Kudremukh Iron Ore Company Limited (KIOCL), has become a desert of iron ore.
An ugly man-made creation overlooks one of the 18 biodiversity hotspots of the world. The Lakya dam built to trap waste iron tailings of Kudremukh Iron Ore Company Limited (KIOCL), has become a desert of iron ore. Scientists have stopped thinking about this artificial desert and environmentalists too have given up their fight to clear this hazard to the environment.
For the past 25 years, this dam, full of damned dust, has been challenging the entire scientific and technical community. But a few bright minds of Bangalore-based Indian Institute of Science (IISc) have provided a glimmer of hope.
This environmentally-enlightened new generation of techies think that the fine iron tailings can become a commercial raw material for manufacturing building materials.
“IISc students and their teachers have taken a truck load of samples and have come up with a model house built with an amalgamation of iron tailings, sand and other construction materials,” said V Bobaraj Jeyaharan, general manager, KIOCL.
“Students from Dayanand Sagar Engineering College, Bangalore and National Institute of Technology-Karnataka, Surathkal, have also started working on this. If all goes according to the plan, we should have a permanent and most eco-friendly solution to iron tailings and ore waste trapped inside the Lakya dam,” he said.
The once well-planned township of Kudremukh has now turned into a ghost town with the Lakya dam becoming a dust bowl.
Every time the wind blows across the white and hard surface of the dam, a dust storm rises in the sky and settles on Shola forests. Visitors go back with a lungful of this hazardous dust.
“We have analysed the composition of the material in the dam and we can say with conviction that they can be bound together to build bricks, tiles and even flooring material if used judiciously with other building materials. Our analysis has also shown that the fine dust has undergone changes over the years. The samples taken from the eastern part of the dam (earliest deposits) are very different from the western part. The earlier deposits have undergone weathering and are suitable for use as construction materials,” said an investigator at IISc on conditions of anonymity.
An engineer with KIOCL said, “If this plain of dust becomes viable for excavation, it will be the best commercial venture for construction material companies as the material will be available in abundance and may be given out at throwaway prices.”
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