40,000 People Live In Gibraltar, A City w/o Any Sewage Treatment; Decade After Decade, Shit & Plastic Flow Into The Sea
Raw sewage from nearly 40,000 people and businesses is being pumped straight into the sea because the British overseas territory of Gibraltar does not have, and has never had, a wastewater treatment plant. For decades, untreated sewage has poured into the Mediterranean from the southern tip of the peninsula at Europa Point, where the government of Gibraltar says there are “high levels of natural dispersion”.
The area is supposed to be protected for wildlife but often there are “wet wipes and plastic pollution entangled in algae and all over the rocks”, said Lewis Stagnetto, of the Nautilus Project, a local environmental charity. Raw sewage pollution can trigger toxic algal blooms that strip oxygen from the water, choking aquatic life. It exposes fish and mammals to a cocktail of chemicals and plastics that can disrupt reproduction and damage health, and puts people at risk by spreading pathogens and antibiotic-resistant genes.
Unlike Britain, Gibraltar’s sewerage system uses seawater, and drinking water comes from desalination. The Gibraltar government says the salinity “historically created challenges that are not present in other wastewater treatment plants around the world”. It also claims that wet wipes “that appear occasionally on our beaches have … come from outlets in nearby Spain”. In 2017, the European court of justice ruled that the UK was in breach of wastewater law by failing to treat Gibraltar’s sewage, but the European Commission lost any power to take action after Brexit.
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The sewer itself appears to be in poor shape. Last year, the opposition Gibraltar Social Democrats (GSD) party described “popular tourist hotspot areas … embarrassingly subjected to the stench of raw sewage”, with waste “directly seeping through the city walls … causing damage to the marine ecosystem”. The government blamed decades of underinvestment for the problem, including years when the GSD held power. The government said there was an “ongoing major project to lay new sewerage mains in phases: a £15m investment in Gibraltar’s sewer infrastructure” as well as “various relining projects which … have resulted in the main sewer being reinforced and improved within the city walls”.
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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/may/06/uk-territory-gibraltar-dumps-raw-sewage-mediterranean