Urban News

The Hindu 06.11.2009

Hi-tech fogging machine to check contagious diseases

Staff Reporter

DINDIGUL: To combat chickengunya, dengue, brain fever and other communicable diseases and to kill mosquitoes, The Department of Health Services has imported a fogging machine from the US for spraying chemicals in the air in urban and rural areas.

Launching the machine here on Thursday, Collector M. Vallalar said the dyna-fog, a truck mounted thermal fogging machine, was suitable to treat large areas. The total cost of the equipment was Rs.12 lakh, including the machine cost of Rs.8.5 lakh and the vehicle cost of Rs.3.5 lakh. It has twin resonant pulse jet engines to give greater output of chemicals. Fog sprayed from the machine would go up to a height of 30 feet to kill mosquitoes. Droplets of 10-20 microns in the fog were the most efficient droplet size for controlling adult mosquitoes.

Effective fogging would kill all adult female mosquitoes as those only bite human beings. Fogging should be done either in the early morning or late in the evening because these mosquitoes were very active during these periods. It would be more effective when the wind conditions were calm and the temperatures were neither extremely hot nor cold, he added.

Deputy Director of Health Services A. Jagadeesh Kumar said that 114 litres of diesel, six litres of pyrethrum and 10 litres of petrol would be blended to generate fog to kill mosquitoes in an area that has a population of 12,000. The cost of fogging for an hour would be Rs.8,432.

To begin with, town panchayat and municipalities in the district would be covered. Later, it would be used in panchayats. This machine was supplied to nine out of 40 zones in the State.

The Hindu 06.11.2009

Centralised data information centre to be set up in Dindigul

Staff Reporter

— Photo: G. Karthikeyan

Good initiative: Suresh, Scientist, Central Ground Water Board, Chennai, delivering a special address at a seminar in Dindigul on Thursday.

DINDIGUL: A centralised data information centre will be set up pooling in necessary information available in all departments for execution of big projects in future. It will act as a single platform to get any information of any department instantly, said Collector M. Vallalar.

He was inaugurating a seminar on augmentation of groundwater potential through water harvesting structures, mainly check dams in water sheds in Dindigul district with remote sensing techniques held here on Thursday.

At present, all necessary information were available with respective departments only. To implement major projects, collection of information would take considerable amount of time. Centralised information was essential for implementation of any project that required convergence of several departments, he added.

A new dam that could store water in 3,780 sq.km. would be constructed at an estimated cost of Rs.78 lakh on Kodaikanal hill to irrigate 2,196 acres at Kavunji village. Floriculture would be developed in 200 acres. Proposals had been sent to the government for approval.

At present, water from the Konalaru reservoir, six km away from Berijam Lake in reserve forests, had been irrigating 361 acres only besides meeting drinking the water needs of this village. On implementation, the vegetable production would shoot up to 9,000 tonnes from the present 5,000 tonnes. “We had abandoned a plan to rehabilitate Konalar reservoir, a weak earthen dam, at an estimated cost of Rs.150 lakh in order to take up this less expensive new dam,” he added.

In his special address, Central Ground Water Board Scientist S. Suresh said that water potential and quantum of water drawn from the ground irrigation and other purposes should be calculated before taking up the work on augmentation and ground water recharge. System approach was essential for executing such projects. While check dams would be small regulatory structures to scale down velocity of water on slopes, percolation tanks would be a large structure on plain surface.

In his technical lecture, Indian Geo Informatics Head of Operations D. Raghavan stated that the visualisation of water shed using geo informatics would be useful. Satellite pictures would help gain knowledge on topography and sub-surface strata and water flowing paths. Right spots for construction of check dam or percolation tanks could be easily identified.

Mr. Raghavan advised engineers to bring all information to one platform to analyse in different angles to get a perfect solution.