Niti Aayog member V K Saraswat said CSIR-CRRI steel slag road technology will be a boon to Border Roads Organisation (BRO) to build long-lasting heavy-duty roads in strategic border areas. He emphasised that using alternative road materials like processed steel slag aggregates in place of natural aggregates as steel slag bituminous surfacing due to its inherent high strength and stiffness will offer a more durable heavy duty road surface in face of inclement weather conditions in the region for road construction to conserve ecology and mountainous topography in hilly states like Arunachal Pradesh. Saraswat said this after inspecting the one km stretch of Joram-Koloriang steel slag road, built by BRO in Arunachal Pradesh, along with a team of CSIR-Central Road Research Institute, BRO, Tata Steel and Lower Subansiri Deputy Commissioner Bamin Nime.
The 1-km steel slag road section is constructed by BRO’s Project Arunank Division under CSIR-Central Road Research Institute, New-Delhi using processed steel slag aggregates supplied by TATA Steel Jamshedpur plant. Around 1,200 MT processed steel slag aggregates were transported from Jamshedpur to Itanagar by railways and then from Itanagar to the project site near Ziro in Lower Subansiri district by road.