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By Tarsh Thekaekara A cutting-edge neutrino observatory is slated to come up in Singara in the Nilgiris, bang in the middle of a biodiversity hotspot and the Mudumalai Tiger Reserve. There are sound geophysical reasons for this choice of location. But there is no doubt that the observatory will irreversibly damage the ecology of the region
India is on the threshold of yet another scientific coup: The setting up of a neutrino observatory. There are barely a handful of such observatories in the world, and the India-based Neutrino Observatory (INO) is going to be the most advanced among them. It will put our country at the forefront of neutrino physics. This was former President APJ Kalam’s dream project. One that he hoped would inspire young people to devote themselves to science. But there’s a catch. The observatory has to be constructed at least a thousand metres underground,and the place chosen is Singara in the Nilgiri hills of Tamil Nadu. To make matters worse, Singara is part of the Mudumalai Tiger Reserve. The tunnelling alone would cause immeasurable damage to the flora and fauna of this already fragile ecosystem. Neutrino physics versus wildlife conservation. What would you choose?
What are neutrinos and why do we need to observe them? The traditional idea that protons, neutrons and electrons are the smallest and most fundamental particles has altered considerably over the years. We now know that there are a host of even smaller particles; neutrinos are one of them. They have no charge, almost no mass, and are so tiny that they pass through absolutely everything, including the earth. The main source is the sun and the stars; even at this moment there are thousands of neutrinos passing through each of us. As they move through matter, though, there is a small probability that they will collide with the nucleus of an atom. When this happens they interact with the nucleus, get absorbed, and produce another harmless particle called a muon. It is this interaction that will be used to detect and study them. A detector is essential: a medium that allows the neutrino to interact with the nucleus so that the interaction can be studied. The higher the density of the detector material, the greater the chance of a neutrino colliding with the nucleus. The neutrino detector proposed for this observatory is iron -- about 100,000 tonnes of it! Layers of iron will be attached to layers of another material that will monitor the muons being emitted. This will be stacked up to form the main detector, measuring a phenomenal 12 metres in height, 16 metres in width and 48 metres in length. The reason why the neutrino observatory is being constructed deep underground is that neutrinos are one of the only particles able to travel through matter almost undisturbed. The earth and rock around will act as a filter and allow only the neutrinos to finally reach the detector. To ensure that all other particles are filtered, the observatory needs to be surrounded by at least one kilometre of rock. But why do we need to observe and understand neutrinos in the first place? This is a rather difficult question to answer. Scientists would argue it will help us better understand the universe and how it all began. It could possibly have vast applications in the field of astrophysics. It would expand the horizons of human understanding of the universe. Fundamental research on its own very rarely has any direct application. But it is absolutely essential for all other applied research. Without fundamental research no other research is possible. It’s like trying to build a car before nuts and bolts were invented. Technology and the way in which we now live would not have been possible without fundamental research. But why in the middle of the forest?
The main reason is rock cover -- the Singara hill is perfect. Other sites like Rammam in Darjeeling can’t compare with Singara. The charnockite rock in Singara is very dense, which means it won’t collapse easily. Once the tunnel is drilled, the ‘stand up time’ before supporting arches need to be put up is rather long -- 90 days to infinity. This is not the case in Rammam, where the time in some places is only about 24 hours. Other logistical aspects like distance to the nearest railway station and airport also favour Singara. Singara is about 90 km from Mysore, 100 km from Coimbatore and 250 km from Bangalore. The nearest railhead in Rammam is New Jalpaiguri, 150 km away. Further, the Tamil Nadu Electricity Board already has a hydroelectric power plant inside the hill -- the Pykara Ultimate Stage Hydro Electric Project (PUSHEP). Geological mapping of the shears, dykes and joints has therefore been done both from surface projections and underground tunnels. Possible environmental damage
There is some ambiguity over the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA). A Coimbatore-based organisation called SACON did one in June 2007 but it has not been made public to date. The Chennai-based Care Earth has also put together an environmental management plan but this too has not been made available to the public. So, there are no official reports available on the project despite the fact that it has received clearance from the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF). Local conservationists find it hard to believe that the project would have got clearance from the MoEF had there been a comprehensive EIA, since the damage it could cause is considerable. According to the latest INO report, the actual functioning of the neutrino observatory may not cause much inconvenience. The main facility is being planned in Mysore, and only around 20-40 people will be staying on campus. Also, it is claimed that there will not be too much movement between the two places. But this will happen only if the observatory never expands. Given the fact that this is going to be one of the biggest observatories in the world, that’s rather hard to believe! The construction phase
The biggest problem will be in the construction phase. Going from past experiences with the PUSHEP project, there could be very serious consequences.  The INO project needs 50,000 tonnes of iron in the first stage and another 50,000 tonnes in the second stage only for the detector, not for construction of the observatory. Construction of the observatory will require approximately another 35,000 tonnes of cement, steel, PVC, copper, aluminium, sand and other building materials. This huge volume of iron and other material will come from Mysore (the nearest railhead) and will be moved by 20-tonne trucks. This will call for the building of new roads through the forests, something that the forest department is unlikely to permit. Assuming that eight-tonne trucks are used on the existing roads, the project will need around 137,000 tonnes of material, or 17,125 trucks-loads, to be moved in.
The next problem is the debris that will be generated. In the absence of official data, these are some rough calculations based on the dimensions and scale of the project taken from the latest INO report. The tunnel is going to be ‘D’-shaped, 6.5 m wide, 6.5 m tall and 2.38 km long. That means nearly 90,000 cubic metres of rock will have to be taken out. The complex will consist of an experiment hall (about 22 m wide, 30 m tall and 120 m long) -- about 75,000 cubic metres -- a smaller cavern for the control facilities of about half the size, and a loading and storage area. That’s roughly another 60,000 cubic metres. In all -- 225,000 cubic metres. This was the figure quoted at a public meeting in Ootacamund (Ooty) by the INO team. Given the density of granite in the area (2.8g/cm), this translates to 630,000 tonnes of debris, or around 78,000 truck-loads. That means almost 95,000 trucks, and double the amount in terms of trips through the forest since the trucks have to go up and down. Since construction is scheduled to take around four years, it adds up to 130 truck trips every day!
Ignoring the environmental damage that will be caused in other places by the mining and extraction of such large quantities of iron and other material from the ground, it still seems ludicrous to have such a project in the middle of a tiger reserve. Experiences with PUSHEP
A few scientists working on the project are genuinely concerned about the effect the project will have on the forests and are keen to minimise the damage. But this was also true for the PUSHEP project, which had a disastrous impact on the area. The problem with such huge projects is that they are bigger than any of the people who are in charge of them. Once the process starts they assume a life of their own and can’t be controlled or kept in check -- there’s just too much at stake. Even if it is proven, halfway through the project after around Rs 500 crore has been spent, that tigers are disappearing as a direct result of the project, there is no way it can be stopped. If a major discovery is made here, and scientists from all around the world are keen on using a part of this facility, things will simply have to expand even if it is against the wishes of the scientists who were instrumental in setting it up. When construction started on the PUSHEP project they had a local body of NGOs and environmental experts advising them on how to minimise damage and work with the local people. They had a set of rules for workers, movement of vehicles, storing of debris, use of local resources and a host of other measures that minimised disturbance to the forests. For two years things went well and the local body took a step back. Then the person in charge of the project was transferred and the new person was not concerned about the regulations. As a result, environmental safeguards were flouted and the results proved disastrous. Masinagudi town ballooned from a couple of hundred people to around 10,000. A large number of staff were moved in and settled there to run the hydroelectric plant. All the migrant workers also stayed on. The supporting infrastructure grew around them -- and a town was born. The INO group says it hopes to store all the debris close to the project and take it out slowly over a period of time. This will significantly reduce the number of trucks going through the forest. But it could have other more serious consequences. During the PUSHEP construction, in May 1996, vast quantities of quarry muck that came out of the tunnelling was dumped into the Karimar waterhole. This waterhole flows into the Moyar river, and the muck leaked into the river making the water unpotable both for the residents of Theppakadu, a village downstream, and animals in the area. Things became so bad that the river got completely choked. Finally, on the insistence of the wildlife warden, the EB was forced to open a sluice gate at Glenmorgan to flush out the river. Despite this there has been a slow leaching of muck back into the river over the years. What happened to the animals when the only perennial water source in the Mudumalai Tiger Reserve was polluted has never been documented. Nor the huge loss of indigenous fish and other aquatic species that inhabit this stretch of the river. The elephant-man conflict and tourism
In the last few years, 38 people have been killed by elephants in the region. And many more have been injured. This conflict is worsening and has mainly been attributed to tourism and the huge number of vehicles coming through. Though tourism is not seen as a problem by the government as of now, a single drive along the Mudumalai road will make most rational people consider. The history of Masinagudi and how it became a tourist hotspot needs to be examined. Two decades ago, Masinagudi was a tiny village with one teashop and one provision store. Being in a rain-shadow area the land was not particularly conducive to agriculture. Only a few scattered outsiders who wanted a quiet life settled here. Then a few ‘outsider’ families started letting out some rooms to friends from Bangalore. And a few more followed suit. This was still not a problem. The families running the tourist places regularly complained about how difficult life was as they were forced to drive to Ooty for provisions. Everything was quite basic. Bad roads, simple food, nothing to do except watch the wildlife. Only a few hardy people genuinely interested in wildlife ventured into Masinagudi then. The animals still ruled the place, and tourism was contained. Then PUSHEP and Masinagudi town happened. Suddenly it became an ideal place to invest and develop a commercially viable tourism industry. You no longer had to run to Ooty for provisions -- Masinagudi town had developed considerablythanks to PUSHEP. It now had reasonable infrastructure. While the local farmers could not afford borewells, the returns from a tourist resort more than justified the investment. Almost overnight, the area was littered with resorts and tourists. Today there are 44 resorts here, almost all with powerful electric fences around the property to protect their guests. Guests who are often noisy and insensitive, who come to Masinagudi to have a bash -- loud music, dancing and plenty of alcohol, something they could well have enjoyed at a private party or disco in Bangalore. Mudumalai Tiger Reserve and elephant corridors
The argument that the INO project is smaller than PUSHEP and therefore will not worsen the situation is not acceptable. PUSHEP was built at a time when awareness about the environment was low and when the danger signs, like weather changes and global warming, were less apparent. Today, local conservationists and concerned scientists are looking for ways to reverse the damage that’s been done and reduce the pressure on forests and animals. Every year they watch the forests shrinking and various migratory paths being cut off. They have observed that elephant and gaur, which never ventured onto slopes steeper than 25-30 degrees, are now forced to climb 40-degree slopes to move between forests! The access road to Singara cuts right through the Kallamalai-Singara-Avarahalla corridor; the project site is next to this. Animals use this corridor all the time to move between the Mudumalai sanctuary, the Segur plateau and the Eastern Ghats. The road is now hardly used for vehicular transport -- elephants, leopards and tigers still dominate. But that will change with the construction of a big observatory right in the middle of the reserve. The Segur plateau is part of the Nilgiris-Eastern Ghats landscape which harbours nearly 25% of the Asian elephant population. And it’s not just elephants. Mudumalai is proud of the fact that its tiger population is stable and healthy, something for which it has won international recognition. It has also recently been declared a tiger reserve. In all, 676 species of plants, 173 species of vertebrates, 12 species of amphibians, 38 species of fish, 46 species of reptile, 87 species of birds, and 28 species of mammals (including tiger, leopard, gaur, wild dog, bear and deer) were last recorded here. Examples abound of well-intentioned projects slowly encroaching and irreversibly destroying our forests in spite of regulatory safeguards. A large residential school planned close to the Kallar corridor on the eastern slopes of the Nilgiris was forced to relocate after an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) suggested that the school be moved to allow the corridor to be 500 metres wide. The site was shifted marginally. Inevitably, though, hostels, staff quarters, shops and various other buildings cropped up. And the corridor was pinched to 50 metres. The effect this had on the Wendy clan of elephants has been well documented. (The matriarch of the clan was collared by researchers and nicknamed Wendy for their reference.) The clan had more than 50 individuals and was one of the many clans that had been using the Kallar corridor for as long as people remember. A 50-metre corridor meant that clan members had to scatter and were forced into agricultural fields and human habitation. They tried to hide in whatever small green patches there were by day, and find the forests by night. One was seen standing absolutely still all day in a single small clump of bamboo surrounded by houses. Frightened local residents threw burning rubber tyres at the elephants, further scattering them. And slowly people started killing them. Today, researchers have completely lost track of the clan. A few may have survived but most of the clan was wiped out. At a public meeting in Ooty, Jayashree from Care Earth said: “The site is not in the middle of the forest at all, or blocking any corridor. The entrance to the tunnel is completely on patta land.” It would be a long call explaining that to the elephants! The whole of Masinagudi town and the patta land in it is surrounded on all sides by the Mudumalai Tiger Reserve. The tunnel’s entrance, mentioned by Jayashree, is in fact a few hundred metres from the forest. How can anyone doing an Environmental Impact Assessmentpossiblybelieve that there will be no problem as long as it is patta land? Maybe the conservationists here should spend more time teaching animals to stick to the strips of land we’ve left for them and not encroach onto our patta land! These 5,000-odd square kilometres of almost contiguous forests form the Nilgiri Biosphere and are spread across three states. It’s now the largest contiguous forest in Asia and contains the largest gene pool for tigers and a host of other critically endangered species. According to a recent National Geographic study, the Nilgiri Biosphere has been marked as among the most important of ‘biodiversity hotspots’.
So what’s the way forward? Although there are many who unfairly project the conservationists’ concern as being ‘anti-progress’, ‘anti-national’ or ‘anti-development’, every conservationist I have met is keen that the INO project be implemented. They are quick to acknowledge that this would be a great step for our country as well as for the entire scientific world. Their only question is -- should it be here? In the middle of one of our most valuable forests? Aren’t our forests and wildlife as much a matter of national pride as our scientific achievements? It’s a difficult question to answer. But one cannot help wondering whether we are taking far too many irreversible steps backward for this one step forward. (Tarsh Thekaekara is a young conservationist based in Gudalur, Nilgiris) InfoChange News & Features, July 2008 |
