Malmö city is working with water utility VA Syd to investigate why water certain public bathing areas sometimes becomes unsanitary. The beaches in the Western Harbor are very urban, which means that they are affected by the city’s environment more than other bathing areas. This is a challenge for water quality. We investigate whether factors like heavy rain, water treatment infrastructure and drainage issues affect the water quality in the Western Harbor. Other causes could be sediment from the seabed, malfunctions of water treatment infrastructure or ship discharges.
Activities carried out in the project 2018:
- Updating information on bathing water quality on webpage (malmo.se/strandliv and vasyd.se on broadcasting)
- Development of communication on bathing water quality, both through information on bathing places and communication with bathers
- Fixed error pairing. What was discovered was two malfunctioning dishes in the Bo01 area in the West Harbor, which could be a cause of bad water samples. However, do not exclude that there are several other reasons. The error connections were discovered when VA SYD filmed the wiring network in the area as part of Urbana Baths investigation. The discovery has been a result of a cooperation between Malmö city and VA SYD in the bathing water issue.
- Extended sampling at the seaside resorts and potential sources to investigate the impact of heavy rain (difficult due to the drought this year)
Co-operation therefore continues and the next step is a flow study of the immediate area, in order to better understand how the water is moving and identify other potential sources that may affect water quality.