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More ball-shaped debris has washed ashore at Sydney’s Bondi, Coogee, Maroubra and Cronulla beaches, the New South Wales government has confirmed.
The office of the acting premier, Penny Sharpe, told Guardian Australia on Wednesday that “small numbers of balls” – some only pea-sized – had washed up on the four beaches in the past few days.
These balls had been cleaned up and sent for testing and, as there were so few pieces, none of the beaches had been closed, Sharpe’s office said.
The Randwick, Sutherland and Waverley councils were contacted for comment.
Dee Why and South Curl Curl beaches in Sydney’s north remained closed on Wednesday after marble-sized “grease balls” were discovered on nine beaches in the area on Tuesday.
The Northern Beaches council said it had reopened Queenscliff, Freshwater, North Curl Curl, North Steyne and North Narrabeen beaches on Wednesday morning.
Sydney’s beaches have been plagued by debris balls in recent months but the Environment Protection Authority (EPA), Sydney Water and the government maintain they cannot work out where they are coming from.
Addressing the media on Wednesday afternoon, Sharpe said the balls were a “mystery”.
Sharpe confirmed an EPA investigation was ongoing, while the government had also been working with various agencies as to whether there had been “pollution events” – but none had been identified.
“This is a phenomenon that’s not being seen anywhere else in the world,” she said. “There is the testing that has been done, and it’s been very extensive, so we know what the balls are made of, but they’re different depending on the beach.”
Sharpe said she had “full confidence” in the EPA.
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“We don’t have an answer yet, but I’m not going to put the blame at the feet of the EPA here,” she said. “This is an odd situation that remains a mystery that we’re getting to the bottom of.”
Thousands of pieces of spherical debris washed up on many eastern suburbs beaches, including Coogee and Bronte, in October last year.
Those balls were initially widely reported to be “tar balls” comprising crude oil until testing coordinated with the EPA revealed they were consistent with human-generated waste – or “likely lumps of fatberg”, according to experts.
More ball-shaped debris washed up in Kiama in November, before green, grey and black balls washed up on Silver beach at Kurnell, in Sydney’s south, in early December.
The EPA said on Tuesday the balls that washed up on Sydney’s eastern suburbs beaches in October were found to consist mostly of fatty acids and petroleum hydrocarbons. But the regulator said testing could not “pinpoint a source” or identify what caused them to form, because “there was no source sample available for comparison”.
The EPA said analysis of the balls that washed up in Kiama found they had a similar composition to those that washed up on the eastern beaches and it was “still awaiting” the final results of the Kurnell debris.
