The Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board has detected four dyeing units for discharging effluents into the open during raids conducted over the last few days ending on Thursday.

Official sources said of the four units, three units were carrying out fabric dyeing with the help of winches and the other one was involved in the dyeing of accessories like zip and button.

In an effort to ease the drawing of electricity from main grids, the District Panchayat administration is to set up solar-powered street lights to lit public places in semi-urban and rural areas across 13 blocks in the district at an estimated total outlay of Rs.45.5 lakh.

District panchayat chairman M. Shanmugam told The Hindu that the lights would be set up at places where the people throng in large numbers like bus stations, commercial places, markets and also in areas where the streets were lonely.

Industrialists planning to start polluting units in four districts of the State are unable to get the Consent to Establish (CTE) from the Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board (TNPCB) as the government is not willing to relax norms.

According to TNPCB sources, the board has not taken any decision on the demand from industrialists to set up new units, including dyeing and fabric units, in Karur, Tirupur, Erode and Namakkal towns where water pollution has been a problem for a decade and more.

With a view to bringing down the maintenance cost of the street lights of local bodies, Chief Minister Jayalalithaa on Sunday announced a scheme to replace the existing lights with a light-emitting diode (LED) bulbs and solar energy lamps.

A release said many municipalities were struggling to meet the electricity bills for the street lights. The LED bulbs will be used on experimental basis in nine corporations, 35 municipalities in Tirupur and Thanajvur region and 101 town panchayats.

Tamil Nadu has started using global positioning system and electronic total stations to survey land.

Speaking at the state revenue ministers conference in New Delhi today, Thoppu N D Venkatachalam said the survey using the global positioning system and electronic total station was conducted on a pilot basis in one village initially and then using the experience gained, the scheme had been extended further.

A new system of surveying, using Global Positioning System (GPS) and Electronic Total Stations, is in progress in districts including Chennai, Coimbatore, Tirupur and The Nilgiris, according to Revenue Minister Thoppu N.D. Venkatachalam.

Addressing a conference of State Revenue Ministers in New Delhi on Thursday, Mr. Venkatachalam [the text of whose speech was released in Chennai] said that on a pilot basis one village was chosen and, using the experience gained, the system — Modern Surveying — extended.

Gas Authority of India Limited (GAIL) has announced a higher compensation to farmers in seven districts of the state on whose land through which it would be laying underground pipeline to take liquefied natural gas from Kochi to Bangalore.

“The revised scale has been fixed as per the directions of the State Government by which each farmer will now be getting a compensation equivalent to 13 per cent of the ‘new guideline value’ of the land utilised for laying pipeline plus an amount to offset the cost of crops displaced, if any, to facilitate digging of earth,” S. Angamuthu, senior manager of GAIL, told The Hindu .

Certain section of population seeks relaxation of ban on tourism; specialists are against any dilution of the scheme

The Tamil Nadu Government’s latest notifications on demarcation of core and buffer zones of three tiger reserves in the State may still require a fine-tuning to strike a balance among ecology protection, tribal welfare and tourism promotion, feel conservationists and wildlife experts. As the demand for relaxation of the ban on tourism becomes shriller in the reserve areas, the specialists are against any dilution of the scheme spelt out in the notifications.

Certain section of population seeks relaxation of ban on tourism; specialists are against any dilution of the scheme

The government’s latest notifications on the demarcation of core and buffer zones of three tiger reserves in the State may still require a fine-tuning to strike a balance among ecology protection, tribal welfare and tourism promotion, feel conservationists and wildlife experts. As the demand for relaxation of the ban on tourism becomes shriller from certain section of the local population in the reserve areas, the specialists are against any dilution of the scheme spelt out in the notifications.

With virtually all modes of transport going the hybrid way, here’s news that could make the rickshaw – which is now restricted to a few Indian cities and pockets of Asia – a possible mode of public transport.

Twenty-six-year-old Sivaraj Muthuraman, a Tirupur-based innovator, has built a ‘hybrid’ rickshaw called the Eco Free Cab, that runs on solar battery and pedal power. This invention entered the India Book of Records under the Science and Technology Category on Saturday.