Mumbai to get two more beaches

Now Marine Drive and Mahim Bay will see a new beach each kilometre long. The State Maritime Authority is all set for this project and is ready to spend a whopping Rs 400 crore for the same.  After, the Maharashtra Maritime Board, was successful in creating an artificial beach in the neighbouring Ratnagiri district, it wants to replicate the same at two stretches of Mumbai’s coastline which is currently anchored with tetrapods.  An artificial beach will not only prove to be a more sustainable and picturesque way of reclaiming land than the four-legged boulders, it will also provide Mumbaikars, who get less than a square metre per capita open space, with more of it.  The creation, more nuanced than a simple sand dump as it involves calculations of tidal motion and depth measurement, will now be attempted at Dadar Chowpatty (part of Mahim Bay) and near Girgaum Chowpatty. According to a report in the Times of India, the Maharashtra Maritime Board will need to procure around 15 lakh cubic metre of sand to extend Girgaum Chowpatty up to Marine Drive Flyover, to provide a beach that will be a kilometre long and 200 metre wide. The outlay is pegged at Rs 240 crore.  Will the beaches last the Mumbai rains? "The coming monsoon will be the test of how successful our Mirye experiment has been," said Raisinghani. The projects, slated to kick off in the fiscal 2018-19, will be partly funded by the Asian Development Bank.