MUMBAI: Satisfied with the performance of robotic multipurpose excavator to clean the nullahs, the BMC may go ahead and buy more of them.

The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has purchased a new robotic multi-purpose excavator machine for the desilting of major drains in the city, as well as the Mithi river.

The growth of water hyacinth-like plants in Mithi river near the international airport in Andheri has turned the stretch into a breeding ground for mosquitoes, complain civic activists.

When the first set of detailed data from Census 2011, Houses, Households Amenities and Assets, was released a couple of weeks ago, there was much flinching at the fact that around half of all Indians still defecate in the open. The census data also showed that piped and treated drinking water is presently enjoyed by just a third of Indian households.

Now, the aim of providing sanitation and piped drinking water for all will demand increasing allocations. But the CSE report Excreta Matters: How urban India is soaking up water, polluting rivers and drowning in its own excreta shows that mere money just can’t solve the problem.

Indians know little about the water they use and the waste they discharge

Water is life, and sewage tells its life story. This is the subject of the “Citizens’ Seventh Report on the State of India’s Environment”, Excreta Matters: How urban India is soaking up water, polluting rivers and drowning in its own excreta. It has a seemingly simple plot: it only asks where Indian cities get their water from and where their waste goes. But this is not just a question or answer about water, pollution and waste.

If a new report is to be believed, India is swimming in its own sewage and turning its rivers into drains for its ever-expanding cities.

MUMBAI: The Mithi River Development Project Phase 2 is set to get a little more expensive.

More than six years after it was proposed, the civic administration has now asked the Central Government to fund the Rs 1,675 crore Mithi River Project, with a view to ease the financial burden.

The stalled infrastructure projects in Mumbai and around, according to a PIL before the Bombay High Court, are a result of the lack of a reserved place for dumping construction waste.

At a time when the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) and the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) are known not to have the best of relations, the former has agreed to ha

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