The Indian Express 23.08.2012
Cloud seeding cost to shoot up 40% as BMC mulls roping in S African plane
The cost of BMC’s cloud seeding project to augment rainfall and make up for deficient monsoon this year is expected to be 40 per cent higher. Fresh estimates have put the cost at Rs 20 crore compared with the original cost of Rs 12 crore.
In cloud seeding, plane sorties are carried out to spread either dry ice or more commonly silver iodide aerosols into the upper part of clouds to try to stimulate the precipitation process and form rain.
The civic body has decided to go ahead with the experiment during the first three weeks of September. The monsoon has been deficient so far, with the island city running up a deficit of 53 per cent from June 1 to August 22, while the suburbs have recorded a deficit of 35 per cent in the same period.
BMC has now sought the Centre’s permission to bring a South African aircraft to the country for cloud seeding. Initially, the agency hoped to get the aircraft from Israel’s national water company, Mekorot, which is helping it conduct the project. But Mekorot has expressed its inability to supply the aircraft in time for the project.
According to R Bamble, Chief Engineer of BMC’s hydraulic engineer department, “The Israel-based company will be unable to provide the aircraft in time for the experiment. We did not want to delay the process further. We approached a company based in South Africa for renting the aircraft. This is bound to increase the cost of the project. Once the proposal is final, we will send it to the standing committee for approval.
Rahul Shewale, standing committee chairman and Shiv Sena corporator, said: “We will approve the cost variation once we receive the Central government nod to bring in the aircraft. All the other necessary permissions from the Airports Authority of India are in order.”
Currently, the civic administration is negotiating with a India-based firm that will bring the aircraft from South Africa, while the radar to detect the clouds that should be seeded will be provided by the IMD.
The deficient rainfall had resulted in low lake levels, forcing the civic administration to resort to cloud seeding. The civic body will conduct cloud seeding for around 15 days in September on the basis of cloud availability. A similar experiment conducted in 2009 had failed to augment water supply in Tansa and Modak Sagar lakes where the Rs 8-crore project was conducted.
Although officials said not much has been done to effectively analyse the result and determine the success or failure of such experiments in the country, there have not been many notable successes. “During deficient monsoon between 1999 and 2003, Karnataka had conducted such experiments. Although they were conducted at one spot, the precipitation occurred more than 100 km away and were failures,” said a senior civic official.
