A new sandy beach at St George’s Bay in Birżebbuġa has been opened to the public for the first time after being replenished with sand dredged from the seabed.

The ‘temporary re-nourishment’ project is one of three planned for bays in the south of Malta this summer. It involved the dredging up of 1,500 cubic metres of sand, extending the beach by around 25 metres.

Opening the beach on Sunday, Tourism Minister Konrad Mizzi said the project had the full blessing of the environment authority and, since the sand had come from the bay itself, would have no negative impact.

In the coming days, he said, similar beaches would be opened at Sliema's Balluta Bay, which will be financed by the new Marriott Hotel, and L-Għar l-Aħmar in Marsaxlokk, where a barrier will be put in place to protect the new beach.

Meanwhile, he added, the environment authority had just given the go-ahead for works at Il-Fajtata, a small inlet in St Thomas Bay, Marsascala.

“This is all part of government's commitment to improve the tourism project and help people better enjoy these bays,” Dr Mizzi said.

The replenishment projects follow a pilot project at Balluta Bay last summer, which lasted just seven months after storms swept the sand away.

The agreement with the nearby Marriott to repeat the project includes a commitment by hotel owners to replenish the bay for the next five years.

Authorities have pledged that the beach will remain public, with no concessions granted to the hotel, although the mayor of St Julian's has nevertheless expressed concerns over the arrangement. 

The Marsaxlokk project, meanwhile, is planned to be a semi-permanent fixture, with a roughly 15-year lifespan depending on intermittent top-ups. A submerged beam is intended to stop the sand from escaping back beneath the waves when the first storms hit at the end of summer.

The new beach at St George’s Bay, by contrast, has been put forward as a “temporary extension”.