The Water Services Corporation is pleased to announce that repairs on the Gozo Sewage plant outfall will occur over the coming days. The outfall has lost its last 35 meters due to past illegal discharges limiting its discharge point from around 90 meters to around 40.
The repairs, including an improved setup at the plant, will ensure optimal environmental performance. Over and above this, a state of the art recently patented diffuser will also be installed. The works will incur a cost of around half a million Euro.
Mobilisation will start on 21 August 2019 at Boiler Wharf with highly specialised equipment being loaded on the main barge through which the works will be conducted. Work on the outfall will start on 24 August and will take 10 days to complete. Demobilisation, including diver decompression is expected to take another five days.
The operation will be undertaken by 18 highly skilled workers including a team of 10 foreign divers.
Equipment will involve one motorized barge, an unmotorized flat barge, and a support tugboat. A saturation system to ensure the safety of the divers will be mounted. This includes a bell-like structure that will allow divers to surface from a depth of around 80 meters to enter a decompression chamber. Also, three container houses, two generator units, and other diving equipment will be loaded on the barge.
The heaviest item is the hyperbaric chamber, which weighs 18 tons.
The equipment that is being used will weigh approximately 30 tons. The hyperbaric unit will house divers will be the residence of the two highly skilled deep-sea divers for five days, in which they will have all safety equipment and basic amenities/provisions.
More information, including exclusive footage of the operation, will be made available in the coming days.
WSC CEO Richard Bilocca explained how through this operation ‘The Corporation will be overcoming another longstanding challenge that will continue to improve the services it offers, he thanked the teams involved and local port authorities for the extensive support in the coordination of the required works’.
