A silver lining to the ore saga

Slag - the refuse from sponge iron, steel units - used to construct pilot project road

Not all stories about Bellary’s iron ore need to be negative. One example of this is an eight-km stretch of the Gudadur-Basaragodu road in the taluk that is being constructed using slag, the refuse from sponge iron units and steel factories.

The slag, which was considered waste all these years, can give the roads the durability which was evading them all this while. The road is being constructed under the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana (PMGSY) of the Union government.

Slag - the ore from which much of the iron content has been extracted - has proved to be a good substitute for the fine gravel that went into road construction work all these days. The new road will be open for traffic in a few days time.

Thousands of tonnes of slag generated at the steel factories and the more than 100 sponge iron units pile up at a particular place in the district. For the first time in the State, they are being put to good use much to the glee of the people in the area.

The road is being laid in three layers - the first layer is murram (tough gravel), the second layer is slag (instead of the fine gravel that is usually used) and the third layer is
fine gravel.

After the road is levelled using rollers, bitumen is poured onto it to give it the final shape.

This road laying method has been employed in North India in the past, but has been adopted for the first time in Karnataka, PMGSY executive engineer Raghavareddy told Deccan Herald.

Another advantage of using slag in road work is that it comes at a cost 40 per cent lesser than that of fine gravel.

The iron content in the slag makes the road much stronger than that constructed using conventional methods.

Slag is being supplied for the road under construction from the Shatavahana sponge iron unit. Slag has all these days been used in cement and brick manufacturing units and has now made a foray into road work.

Raghavareddy said there were plans to use it in the construction of roads throughout the district, after the pilot project of the Gudadur-Basaragodu road is evaluated.