Soil test begins for Sabarimala airport
KOCHI:AS part of the new survey initiated to identify a stretch of land to build the runway for the proposed Sabarimala Airport at Cheruvally Estate in the Kotayam district of Kerala, a soil test will begin on Monday.
An expert team will assess the soil condition for the construction of the airport runway.
On behalf of the US consulting firm Louis Berger, the officials of the GEO ID agency from Delhi is slated to reach here on Sunday.
The crucial test will take 21 days to complete. The feasibility of construction of runway depends mainly on whether the soil test is favourable or not.
If the project takes wings, it will the fith international airport in Kerala, the other being Trivandrum, Kochi, Calicut and Kannur airports.
According to reports, the 3-km-long runway would be constructed at the centre of the estate. Akin to bore wells, pits with a depth of 10 to 20m would be dug at eight spots.
Apart from this, six pits with a diameter of 1.5m would also be dug. The soil and rocks from these pits would be collected for the testing.
In February this year, a new survey was started to identify a longer stretch of land to build the runway for the proposed airport. Earlier plan was to construct a 2.7km long runway.
A meeting convened by V Thulasidas, special officer for the airport project, expressed doubts over the 2.7-km-long stretch suggested for the runway in the preliminary report for the project.
The runways at Kochi Airport in Nedumbassery and the Trivandrum Airport are 3.4 km long.
The Kannur Airport’s runway has a length of 3.05 km which can be extended up to 4 km. The meeting felt that constructing an airport with a 2.7-km-long runway would affect its future development.
Also obtaining sanctions from the central government for the airport project could be difficult if the runway length was fixed at 2.7 km, the participants felt.
The Chennai-based agency GEOID was asked to carry out an OLS (Obstacle Limitation Surface) survey in Cheruvally Estate to identify two or three stretches of land having a length of at least 3.5 km for the runway.