MLAs write to civic chief on marine litter

With marine litter and massive garbage dumping in Mumbai's waterbodies becoming a talking point courtesy the Versova Beach clean up controversy, elected representatives too seem to now be taking the issue seriously and suggesting that measures need to be taken at the earliest to tackle the growing nuisance.

Two MLAs — Ameet Satam from Andheri (west) who has Juhu Beach in his constituency and Dr Bharati Lavekar from Versova who has the Versova Beach in her constituency — have written to the Municipal Commissioner Ajoy Mehta suggesting him to implement measures to ensure that the garbage dumped in the city's four rivers and their tributaries does not enter the creek.

While Satam spoke about the usage of trash brooms (floating barriers that block litter), Lavekar suggested using contraptions on the locations where the creek enters the sea, setting up toilets, and waste to energy plants close to beaches. "It's time to come up with certain mechanisms to stop trash from entering our oceans. We have already shown BMC a demonstration of putting trash booms at points where our nullah's enter the sea. The same trash can then be collected and excavated," Satam said in his letter.

Meanwhile, Lavekar in her detailed letter apart from talking about initiating the cleaning up of Versova Beach along with 19 other beaches emphasised on the importance of a systematic beach clean up plan. "There will have to be two kinds of clean up carried out on the beaches. One of them is placing contraption which might be as simple as a net to ensure that all the garbage and plastic coming from rivers does not enter the sea."