Friday 11 September 2020
Beachgoers visiting Cobo Bay are advised to avoid direct contact with water from the outfall between Route de Cobo and the slipway adjacent to the kiosk
Agriculture, Countryside and Land Management Services, which manages coastal areas on behalf of the States, advises anyone coming into contact with the water to immediately practice good hand hygiene.
This latest advice follows further poor water quality results at the beach yesterday, after a period of erratic results in the last few weeks.
Samples of water taken from the outfall were tested and found to have very poor water quality, with E.coli present. This is obviously of significant concern and we believe that this is the likely source of the recent bathing water quality failures.
There is no link from the foul drainage system to that outfall on the beach so this is very likely something occurring further up-stream. While we would generally advise against allowing children to play in water from any beach outfall, given they may carry runoff from fields with grazing livestock or debris from roads, it is clearly especially important currently with this particularly outfall.
Staff from Environment Health and Regulation Pollution are working closely with Guernsey Water, which is responsible for the drain to the beach, to try to find the source for the pollution.
