The Water Services Corporation is insisting no slurry is being discharged into the open sea from its wastewater plant in Gozo but is nonetheless investigating whether there could have been a “one-off”.

This statement was made by a corporation spokesman when asked by the Times of Malta for an explanation about footage posted a few days ago on Facebook.

Shot by divers, the short video clip showed thick murky discharge flowing freely from an underwater pipe. The footage was reportedly taken at Ras il-Ħobż dive spot in Gozo, which is also the site of the island’s only wastewater treatment plant.

In recent years, there have been various instances where the popular rocky beach had been contaminated with sewage when the illegal dumping of animal waste in sewers damaged the plant.

New equipment installed last January was meant to address the problem permanently. According to the WSC, the equipment is capable of converting a bowser-full of slurry to a skipload of solid waste in just 15 minutes, with the liquid by-product being treated separately at the plant along with domestic sewage.

The plant did not experience any raw sewage bypasses over the past weeks

Asked about the footage, a WSC spokesman insisted no slurry was being discharged into the open sea from the plant. Whenever there was a fault, the public would be immediately alerted through a press release, he added.

“The said footage is being investigated but the plant did not experience any raw sewage by-passes over the past weeks,” he said.

The WSC also sent a photo of a sample, which, it said, was taken from the treated water prior to discharge into the sea. Though this newspaper could not verify the source of the sample, the spokesman said its colour was “much clearer” than the effluent captured in the footage.

The “discrepancy” in colour was being looked into by engineers and scientists to determine the cause or the nature of a “potential one-off”, he continued.

The spokesman said the plant was performing significantly better than it did last summer, thanks to a holistic strategy to improve its operations. He added that the animal waste treatment set-up, although already successful, would be further fine-tuned over the next weeks.

More upgrades were in the pipeline for the coming months, including the installation of a proper diffuser on the outfall, for which the tenders had been issued, he said.

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