Solar power will be used to ensure uninterrupted power supply to 384 level crossing gates in Thiruvananthapuram railway division as part of the Railway’s energy conservation measures.

The first solar powered level crossing gate at Neyattinkara in the Thiruvananthapuram-Kanyakumari section has already started functioning. This comes close on the heels of the solar power initiative inaugurated at Tiruvalla railway station. The railway division has chalked out a plan to run all the 384 level crossing gates with solar power and to become the first division to have all the level crossing gates solar powered, Divisional Railway Manager Rajesh Agrawal says.

Fishes found dead at the Thiruvallam stretch of the river

After children, the next victims of the polluted waters of the Karamana river at Thiruvallam are the fishes in the river, several hundreds of which have been found floating dead since Wednesday. Barely three weeks after 20 children from the region were diagnosed with leptospirosis, prompting local health officials to splash the river banks with posters cautioning the public against stepping into the river or using the water, several hundreds of dead fishes were found floating along the shorelines of the river, including near the Pallathukadavu bathing ghat, from where the children were suspected to have contracted the disease while practising swimming.

Most translocation efforts by Forest Department have been successful

The Forest Department has embarked upon a challenging task of mitigating animal-human conflicts in the periphery of forest areas by capture and translocation of wildlife responsible for such conflicts. Translocation is the transport and release of wild animals from one location of a forest area to another with emphasis on nuisance- and conflict-control.

The Kerala State Electricity Regulatory Commission (KSERC) has directed the Kerala State Electricity Board (KSEB) to provide an environment that will help promote generation of solar power in the State.

The board and other licensees should support individual initiatives for development of solar energy, the commission said in an order issued on Tuesday. The State government has published the draft of a Kerala Solar Energy Policy, 2013, it reminded the KSEB and other licensees.

Chairman of the Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel (WGEEP) Madhav Gadgil has mooted a participatory movement using Web technologies to create an online database on the state of the environment in India.

In a message delivered in absentia at the inaugural session of the Kerala Vikasana Sangamam held here on Tuesday, to mark the 50{+t}{+h}anniversary of the Kerala Sasthra Sahitya Parishad, he said the pilot project could be implemented in Kerala with interested citizens working in tandem with a consortium of scientists to create an easily accessible database on biodiversity and environmental resources.

Formation of Kerala Drinking Water Supply Company Ltd.

On April 9, Ponnath Devarajan, city councillor for Marad, a communally sensitive fishing hamlet that faces water shortage, moved a resolution before the Kozhikode Corporation Council against a government order for forming Kerala Drinking Water Supply Company Ltd.
He said the company, described by the Water Resources Department in its December 31, 2012, order as one modelled after Cochin International Airport Ltd., was a sheer effort to commodify water, a natural resource and public asset.

The Adivasi Land Rights Protection Council (ALRPC) has decided to intensify the agitation for land and compensation to those tribal people evicted from the abandoned hydroelectric project area in Perinjamkutty.

Its convenor Babu Arackal has said that even after the relay hunger strike in front of the Collectorate at Painavu crossed over 200 days no concrete decision was taken by the district administration and the State government for their rehabilitation.

Plans are afoot to set up twin facilities for the scientific treatment and disposal of biomedical waste in the city.

Despite being a hub of health care facilities (HCFs) generating increasingly large quantities of biomedical waste, Kochi does not have a dedicated treatment and disposal facility. The city now depends on the one run by IMAGE (Indian Medical Association Goes Eco-friendly) at Palakkad.
At present, the Common Biomedical Waste Treatment and Disposal Facility set up by the Kerala chapter of IMA in 2003 handles the biomedical waste generated by its member HCFs across the State.

The Chelannur grama panchayat on Wednesday launched its model village scheme with a mission to declare all its wards free of garbage menace. Panchayat vice-president P.

The Ombudsman for Local Self-Government Institutions has instructed the Thalassery municipality to obtain a scientific report from a competent authority pertaining to a complaint against mobile tow