Curium beach ‘poo’ mystery resurfaces

THE CYPRIOT authorities, and the British Bases (SBA) have still not traced the origins of excrement found on the Curium beach last August, which according to some eyewitnesses this week, had made a reappearance.
Two days ago a caller to the Cyprus Mail said the unidentified faeces was back. Tony from Limassol said he had alerted lifeguards to the problem but they had told him that the British Bases knew about the issue and had told them it was “turtle poo”.
“So I rang the CTO and they said they also know about it and it was being looked into but they didn’t elaborate further,” he said. “It was definitely human excrement,” added Tony.
Asked how he could be so sure he said: “I’ve seen lots of it in my life.” The Briton said he was very much disgusted by the sight. “Of course, when you’re swimming along and one of these comes face-to-face with you… There were at least half a dozen pieces bobbing about,” said Tony.
Even though the man in charge of the island’s beaches at the Cyprus Tourism Organisation (CTO), Glafcos Kariolou, said the faeces found floating in the sea and on the beach last year were human, a spokesman for the SBA said laboratory tests had found that the excrement was not human.
Kariolou did admit that there was no scientific proof that the waste was human, but he said visually it had been confirmed.
“Except for the visual confirmation that the waste was indeed human, unfortunately, we couldn’t find proof and therefore couldn’t find the source from where it came,” said Kariolou yesterday.
“The possibility of it being dumped by ships – as was initially claimed by the British Bases –has been excluded as the sewage systems used by ships turn waste into something like dust particles, which is then dumped in designated port areas. If all this human waste had left a ship in its initial form, its system would have crashed.”
He insisted that full human faeces has been found on the beach. “The beach is used by Cypriots and tourists alike, so we are trying to find ways to fix this problem. But without the cooperation of the Bases, this is impossible.”
He added: “Unfortunately, despite extensive laboratory tests, as the pollution had been there for quite a while, the sea water destroyed any evidence of its origin, so we don’t know. What’s certain is that it comes from a large source of contamination or a waste station or something similar”.
Kariolou said only a small town, a small village or a small military camp could seep that amount of waste into the sea “and it all originates from the same place, as the faeces’ structure is the same”, he claimed.
SBA Spokesman James Mansell said the Bases were pretty much in agreement with the CTO on at least one point – the laboratory tests had been inconclusive.
“The one thing the testing did confirm was that it wasn’t human, but further analysis was inconclusive,” said Mansell.
Asked to comment on claims that the faeces had originated from the Bases, Mansell added: “We deny that, purely on the basis that the tests showed that the excrement wasn’t human.”
He explained that the tests were carried out by a laboratory in Nicosia, which effectively excluded any attempt of a cover-up.
Last August, Curium beach was declared off-limits following complaints of human excrement floating in the water. Red flags were raised on the beach after lifeguards deemed the water unfit for swimming.
A clean-up operation followed and the waste was reportedly removed, but swimming was still not advisable until the source of contamination had been identified.