SilverLine will worsen future flood scenarios: geoscientist

‘CM’s arguments will not hold good for the State’

Kerala’s semi-high-speed SilverLine rail project will have a huge negative impact on the coastal environment that is already under tremendous stress, C.P. Rajendran, geoscientist and Adjunct Professor, National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bengaluru, has said.

“The rail track costing a whopping ₹120 crore a km, at the current estimate, cuts through many of the State’s fragile ecosystems, including wetlands, backwater regions, and paddy fields of the coastal Kerala. Such linear infrastructure projects are not suitable for the State, with its high density of population and least availability of land. It will impose additional pressure on the system’s carrying capacity,” he told The Hindu on Wednesday.