No swimming in The Hague: Sewage in sea water due to power outage

No swimming is allowed at the Noorder- and Zuiderstrand in The Hague on Tuesday. Due to an hours long power outage on Monday, untreated sewage was discharged into the sea on Monday evening. Making swimming in the area unsafe, AD reports.

The power outage affected 37 thousand households, and the Houtrust wastewater treatment plant in The Hague. The outage meant that the sewage pumping stations came to a standstill. As a result, the wastewater could not be purified.

The treatment has emergency facilities, but they are limited in their capacity. Wastewater can be buffered for eight hours. But Monday's outage lasted just longer than eight hours. And that resulted in a large amount of untreated sewage water being discharged in the port of Scheveningen, and spreading to the North Sea.

"We are in contact with [public works department] Rijkswaterstaat and the environmental service about this," the Delfland Water Board said to AD.