Updated: Family park to close down temporarily

The Marsascala family park is being temporarily closed at the advice of experts who recommended it should be declared "out of bounds". Their recommendation was made because of a fault in the adjacent recycling plant that prompted Wasteserv to burn acidic gases. A spokeswoman for the Environment Ministry said the government took on board the recommendation made by the team of experts tasked by Environment Minister Leo Brincat to investigate the plant's operations. The ministry believed that the fault was a symptom of the previous government's bad management and lack of planning. The incident that coincided with the investigative period happened in May when a hydroliser tank was damaged. The tank's function is to clean the biogas produced from treating household waste from hydrogen sulphide, an acidic gas, before this passes into the electricity generating unit. As a result, Wasteserv, the Government agency that runs the facility, has had to flare the biogas containing the hydrogen sulphide from a five-meter chimney stack to avoid causing problems to the electricity generating unit. The experts said that until the necessary repairs were made to the hydroliser, the family park should...