CHENNAI: With a 15-day pilot project on using drones to spray mosquito larvicide in the city’s major waterbodies and canals ending earlier this month, the city corporation has decided to extend the project for a year. The city corporation now receives an average of 8,000 complaints related to mosquito menace in a year. With reports of a visible impact on the larval density in waterways after the pilot initiative, corporation staff said that by extending the project by at least a year, there will be a drop in breeding and the complaints will be brought down to below 1,000.
“Now, we are looking for private contributions through CSR to extend the project and we are planning to make it a permanent system even beyond that,” said a corporation official. Engaging drones will cost the corporation an estimated Rs 24.7 lakh a month.
A recent corporation report on the impact of the pilot operation has shown that it has reduced mosquito breeding by nearly 90%, the official added. With the drones spraying larvicide over major waterbodies, corporation staff are to focus on smaller canals, storm water drains and other sources hidden from plain sight to further bring down breeding.
For the trial run and study, 113 km of the city’s 234 km of waterways were taken up. The waterways included large parts of the Adyar, Cooum, Buckingham canal and other canals like Mambalam canal and Otteri nullah. According to the report submitted after the pilot, the larval density showed reduction in all 15 zones. “Drones enabled spraying of the waterbody which the conventional manual spray equipment is not capable of covering,” the report stated.
This is the second and final trial for the project. The first trial run was undertaken in July last year. The first trial also showed that the larval density in the waterways reduced by 89% when recorded 24 hours after spraying. When used as a permanent system, the drone engagement is expected to reduce household expenditure on protection against mosquitoes.