Karnataka - Mangalore   

Concrete road has no space for trees

M. Raghuram

MCC yet to take decision on planting of trees

LACK OF GREENERY: The newly laid concrete road from Ambedkar Circle to Milagres centre has no place for trees.

MANGALORE: Mangalore city’s authorities seem to be eager to concrete over its roads, and rightly so, as due to heavy rains the bituminous tarmac gets worn out and develops potholes. Experts have observed that the concreting over of roads is the only way to ensure that they last.

But the city has also been losing its greenery in a big way in the rush to concrete over the roads. In the last five years, three major roads have been concreted over and on all three roads the city has lost at least 400 trees, some of which were as old as 150 years.

The stretch of Balmatta Road from Ambedkar Circle (formerly Jyothi circle) to Milagres centre, which extends over a distance of 600 metres, has now been concreted over and is getting ready for use. It will soon be inaugurated. But one thing that strikes the eye is that the entire stretch is devoid of any greenery. The road has been covered with heavy concrete, 40 feet in the centre and with shoulders of 20 feet each on either side comprising inter-locking pavement blocks laid end to end. There is no space left, however, for the planting of trees.

The Mangalore City Corporation (MCC), which has the power to plant trees by the side of roads, has not yet decided about whether or not to plant trees on this stretch. According the sources in the corporation, Balmatta is a commercial area, and the local business community has been opposing the planting of trees there saying that they will block a view of their establishments.

The nodal agency responsible for laying this road is Karnataka Urban Infrastructure Development and Finance Corporation (KUIDFC). Deputy Project Director of the KUIDFC J.R. Lobo, who was once the commissioner of the MCC, said that the onus on deciding whether or not to plant trees on this road as well as on any other road lay with the city corporation. He said it was not right to say that there was no place to plant trees by the side of the road as the interlocking pavement blocks could be easily removed to make way for the planting of trees at any given time.

The corporation, however, is waiting for the work on the road to be completed before it can plant any trees. It seems not to realise, however, that once the road is opened to traffic there will be no place available to plant trees.

Deputy Conservator of Forests, Mangalore, Vijaya Kumar told The Hindu that the Forest Department had sent a letter to the city corporation asking it to indicate pockets in the urban areas where trees could be planted.

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Stories in this Section

Concrete road has no space for trees
Konkani textbooks to be printed at last
‘Nisarga’, a collection of essays on nature, released
Police alerted over ‘cheating’ by foreigners
BJP Yuva Morcha to support stir

Copyright © 2007, The Hindu. Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of The Hindu