Mepa debunks 2000 findings

The 2000 study into the nature of the black dust in Fgura was inconclusive because sample results were not compared to the fly ash from the suspected Marsa power station, the planning authority said yesterday.

"The situation was similar to finding a fingerprint and not trying to match it to the suspect," said Martin Seychell, the planning authority's environment protection director.

Those findings were also contradicted by a 2007 report, where the samples collected did not contain the metals connected to fuel oil.

The authority called a press conference yesterday after it was revealed that a report about the dust had already been presented to Parliament by then Minister Francis Zammit Dimech nine years ago and had stated that the cause was the Marsa power station.

The report had said that samples from nearby contained high levels of particles normally emitted by plants that run on oil.

Labour environment spokesman Leo Brincat has demanded that political responsibility be shouldered because the issue is affecting the environment and health, adding that Labour was after a solution for the good of the public and not to score political points.

"Notwithstanding, Parliamentary Secretary Mario de Marco recently said in Parliament that it could not be concluded that the dust was being emitted by the power station at such a premature stage and Enemalta Corporation was quick to deny any involvement," Mr Brincat continued.

Mr Seychell explained that, following the 2000 Stacey report, Enemalta had taken mitigating measures and complaints only surfaced again in 2007, when fresh studies were carried out to address the "defect" of the first study and determine any changes in composition after the installation of electrostatic precipitators.

But the "surprising" 2007 samples did not contain vanadium, the only source of which is the power station, and nickel, two heavy metals associated with fuel oil, contradicting the Stacey report and fuelling the "mystery".

In hindsight, the samples were not collected correctly and in a controlled manner in that they were carried out by residents, who practically swept the dust off roofs, gathering insects and stones, he said.

A substantial increase in complaints was registered in August and Mepa decided to activate its own sampling to avoid contamination.

The problem this time is that the foreign lab that will carry out the analysis requires 10g of the sample and this has not yet been reached because the dust decreased again and weather conditions impeded its collection.

Mr Seychell could not say how much has been collected to date; neither could he calculate how long it would take to accumulate the required amount as the rate of deposit had dropped, meaning there was no indication as to when the source of the mysterious black dust could be determined.

Meanwhile, samples of fly ash from the power station have already been analysed in the foreign lab and have been shown to contain 33,200mg/kg of vanadium and 8,500mg/kg of nickel.

For them to confirm the culprit, Mr Seycell said the samples from Fgura would have to contain substantial quantities of these metals. If not, it was not quite a matter of starting from scratch because this was a process of elimination, he said.

Mr Seycell said the power station was one of the possible sources but there could be a number of others, including scrap yards and every activity that included combustion. Fgura was an industrialised area and combustion occurred in scrap yards.

Traffic and the drydocks were, however, definitely excluded as sources in 2007, Mr Seychell said.

Enemalta said tests on dust samples from Fgura indicated that their source did not relate directly to the combustion of fuel used in the power station, as was being implied by Mr Brincat.

The opposition was referring to an "obsolete" report, which attempted, without any definitive conclusion, to determine the causes of black dust.

"The study is hardly relevant to today's situation as the fuel used by the Marsa power station has been improved and emissions have been reduced by about 80 per cent since," it said.

Enemalta listed as possible sources the combustion of fuel at the Marsa incinerator, vehicular traffic, ships ferrying in and out of the harbours, bakeries and industrial boilers, among others.