Enemalta dismisses MEPA report blaming Marsa power station for black soot

The reaction comes a day after the publication of a report by MEPA which found the Marsa Power Station responsible for the black dust particle that has plagued the South of Malta for several years.

Enemalta hit out at the report, insisting that it did not carry an analysis of the composition of the samples, and comparison with the flyash produced by the power station.

Enemalta also said the report “bases its conclusions on the ‘evidence’ which can only be drawn from the location and history of the Marsa Power Station.”

“At no point does the report confirm that the main source of the black dust samples collected is the power station, simply because of the 11 particles analysed, only two contain Vanadium and Nickel which are characteristic markers found in dust emissions from the combustion of the fuel used at Marsa,” Enemalta said.

The corporation added that it also failed “to compare the flyash actually produced by the Marsa Power Station to confirm that the concentrations were similar or not.”

Enemalta also contradicted the report’s conclusion that the sporadic episodes of increased black dust are attributable to Marsa Power Station. “The plant operates constantly and the points mentioned, such as faults or soot blowing, are really not relevant.”

It insisted that it “carries out soot blowing twice or three times a day and logs of this activity are submitted to MEPA, so that they can correlate any abnormal dust falls, which has not happened to date.”

Furthermore the black dust complaints were concentrated over a period of two months “and cannot be attributed to the 10 month period when the precipitators were out of service”, Enemalta added.

At the time, Enemalta said that its monitoring equipment recorded almost steady emissions, consistent with those before and after this period.

Enemalta conceded that there are “short-term effects during boiler faults or boiler start-ups, but these generally only last for a few minutes in case of faults or intermittently over a few hours in case of start-ups, and which cannot, with Profs Vella’s own reasoning, be responsible for these black dust episodes.”

Enemaltan added that  “every effort is being made…to shut down the Marsa Power Station as soon as possible bearing in mind the energy supply requirements of the country.”

Apart from purchasing lower sulphur fuel oil (0.7% instead of 1% sulphur) to reduce emissions, Enemalta said it is is continuously investing in projects such as the Delimara power station extension and the interconnector cable which will connect Malta to the European grid.

Only months ago, the Marsa power station exceeded the 20,000 operational hours time limit imposed by the European Commission, which had allowed the government time to run the power station until the time allotment is used up.

However government has announced plans to extend the operation of the plant until the end of 2013, and even has gone so far as to apply for an extension to the operational hours allowed.

Commissioner for Environment Janez Potočnik is however not impressed with government’s chances at successfully obtaining an extension to the power station’s life time.

Just last week, he said in Malta that “under the Large Combustion Plants (LCP) directive, there is no mechanism for an extension to either the number of operational hours or the dates applicable.”

He added that it is however unlikely that an extension to the plant’s lifetime is on the cards: “It is likely that even with this revised review of operation hours, the Marsa plant might still not be compliant with the LCP directive.”

He urged the government to abandon attempts to obtain a derogation to the directive, and simply shut down the plant.

“So it is very important that Malta simply take immediate action to ensure compliance with the LCP directive and that is what will be closely monitored in future,” Potočnik said.