GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — The Gaza Electricity Distribution Co., in cooperation with Gaza Strip municipalities, completed April 18 a Qatar-funded project designed to connect wastewater treatment plants to new power lines with the objective of supplying the plants with uninterrupted power around the clock, the company's public relations director told Al-Monitor.

The new project seeks to end pollution along the coast that untreated wastewater poured into the sea has caused since 2013, preventing the inhabitants of the Gaza Strip from going to the beach and swimming in the sea in the summer. The crisis came after the wastewater treatment plants stopped operating as power outages hit more than 12 hours a day before climaxing to 20 hours daily in May 2017.

The beach water-quality monitoring tests the Environment Quality Authority in the Gaza Strip conducted in April 2018 indicated that 75% of the 40-kilometer (25-mile) coast is polluted and unfit for swimming, with Gaza Strip municipalities dumping more than 115,000 square meters a day of untreated or partially treated wastewater into the sea, the Palestinian Alray news agency reported May 24, 2018.

Qatar has been supplying Gaza's sole power plant with fuel for $60 million every six months since October, which has helped increase how long power stays on in the Gaza Strip. Now electricity is supplied for eight hours, is off for eight hours, is on for eight hours again, and so forth. Prior to the Qatari contribution, Gazans received only four hours of electricity, followed by 16 hours of power cuts, then four hours on again, then 16 off again.