A mysterious black liquid was dumped into the sea last month.A mysterious black liquid was dumped into the sea last month.

The tank cleaners caught dumping a mysterious black liquid into the sea last month could be fined up to €100,000.

A spokesman for the Environment and Resources Authority told this newspaper the company, Ricasoli Tank Cleaning Facility, faced administrative penalties after a pipe dumping waste at the Kalkara seaside was found to be connected to it.

According to the Environment Protection Act, administrative fines can reach up to a maximum of €100,000.

The black liquid, which was filmed being dumped into the sea and the footage shared hundreds of times on social media, is still being investigated by the environ-ment watchdog.

Sources at the University of Malta said they asked to analyse samples of the waste in question.

Ricasoli Tank Cleaning Facility is operated by Waste Oil Limited, which was given a 30-year lease to manage the plant in 2013.

The company has not replied to questions sent repeatedly by this newspaper in recent weeks.

Two years ago, the Times of Malta reported that a similar pipe was attached to the foot of the Ricasoli bastions and discharged a black liquid that gave off a strong smell of fuel.

At the time, Waste Oils Limited concluded that it “cannot provide” a rational explanation for the black effluent being discharged into the sea.

It said that the increased use of water to clean tanks after the authorities banned it from using certain chemicals could have resulted in an overflow of waste fluids into the sea.

Marine biologist Victor Axiak called for independent water tests to verify the company’s claims. Prof. Axiak now heads the ERA.

Alan Deidun, an ERA board member, said that he believed the authorities should ensure that any liquid being dumped was as clean as possible.

He said he had first raised the issue back in 2014 when the Ricasoli Tank Cleaning Facility had been found dumping the sulphur-rich liquid into the sea.

The facility, he said, had been allowed to continue dumping the liquid in the area frequented by bathers because no alternative had been provided.

“I expect the facility to, at least, introduce a better treatment pro-cess to ensure that the liquid left over is as close to clean water as possible,” said environmentalist Prof. Deidun.

Sign up to our free newsletters

Get the best updates straight to your inbox:
Please select at least one mailing list.

You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in the footer of our emails. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform. By subscribing, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing.