Chennai: Coming under all-round criticism and ridicule after his grand scheme of using thermocol sheets to prevent evaporation loss in Vaigai flopped, cooperative minister Sellur K. Raju on Saturday said he turned to the ‘technology’ as it had been successfully tested in Rajasthan in 2006. It would be tested again on Sunday with thicker thermocol, he said.
“They (Rajasthan) had also used mustard oil to prevent water evaporation. We did not try that here. Water is stored in 60 acres in Vaigai dam. We tried this thermocol experiment in only five cents of the area and spent just Rs 8000”, the minister told Deccan Chronicle.
He said the officials had estimated it would Rs 10 lakh to cover the entire water area with thermocol. “We only began in a small way. We will try thicker thermocol on Sunday in a small area. We hope it will succeed”, he said, adding that 1.2 million cubic feet of Vagai water was being lost every day due to evaporation.
The Friday exercise went awry when the thermocol sheets floated on the Vaigai water got swept away by strong winds. When some sheets were taken by boat into deeper water and dropped, they drifted fast to the shore. After this, the minister held discussions with PWD 'experts' on how to overcome the problem of wind and water current. It appears that using thicker thermocol has emerged as the solution.
Madurai collector K. Veera Raghava Rao claimed that theromocol is non-polluting but scientists and marine biologists insisted that the thermocol project could be dangerous. Thermocol is non-biodegradable and splits up into tiny bits after soaking in water. The fish could feed on such bits and die, the scientists said.
