How to avoid half truths

The way Mr Michael Falzon, chairman of Water Services Corporation, replied to the proposals on how to avoid water service suspension is extremely surprising. ('How to avoid false pretensions', The Times, August 21).

Rather than commenting on the proposals, namely the need to build a water reservoir at Xwieki large enough to hold a three/four day supply of water for the Sliema/St Julian's region, and to connect together all large water reservoirs in Malta so as to be able to supply water to areas which suffer a breakdown in their water production units, thus effectively creating what might be called a national strategic water reserve, Mr Falzon chose to use arguments which are irrelevant to the issue of water cuts.

It is true that the project for the construction of a water reservoir at Xwieki was first conceived by the Nationalist administration of the 1990s but it is also true that little was done about this project during those years.

The 1996-98 Labour administration reviewed all the projects proposed by the previous Nationalist administration and those which were considered sensible and fitted in with the priorities of the Labour administration were taken on board. One such project was the Xwieki reservoir.

Incidentally, another project which was also taken on board by the Labour administration, even though the original agreement with the European Investment Bank (EIB) was signed in 1995 by Prof. Guido de Marco, then foreign affairs minister, was the financing of the sewage treatment plants by the EIB.

The Labour administration decided to honour this agreement because there was no other way these sewage treatment plants could be built within a relatively short time period even though this entailed the introduction of a sewage tariff. Furthermore, this project conformed with Labour's environmental policy based on the polluter pays principle.

The sewage treatment plants are extremely important not only because they ensure once and for all that no drainage is pumped out to sea with the consequence of regular sea pollution, but more so because the country requires the second class water produced by this process for our industry, agriculture, landscaping projects and other secondary uses.

Such water would replace some of our very expensive water produced by the RO plants. We strongly believe that the only way to curtail the spiraling expenses of the Water Services Corporation, as well as to ensure that our priceless water resource, i.e., our aquifer is no longer over-exploited by uncontrolled pumping, is to have a regular supply of cheap second-class water.

Incidentally, in his contribution Mr Falzon also mentioned that the WSC subsidiary Malta Desalination Services (MDS), set up by the Labour administration, purchased some Lm600,000 worth of spare parts for which it now has no use ('WSC considering buying worthless stocks to save MDS subsidiary', The Times, August 21). Mr Falzon conveniently forgot to mention two arguments in this regard.

First of all, MDS was set up in 1997 to take over the management of the RO plants from a foreign private contractor. By doing so, MDS procured a saving of about Lm1.5 million a year for WSC.

Secondly, the reason why these spare parts (part of a consignment worth Lm1.6 million) are worthless is that with the change in the administration, the Nationalist government chose to change the pumping systems in the RO plants 'to make them more energy efficient'.

In doing so, it is now apparent that the WSC did not take into account that there was a large stock of spare parts for the (then) existing pumping systems.

Maybe Mr Falzon could now inform us as to how much it cost MDS to effect the change in the RO plants, including rendering Lm600,000 worth of spare parts worthless in the process.

Rather than trying to politicise the issue of water supply suspension which is of national importance due to its adverse impact on our economy, it would be much better if Mr Falzon, as chairman of WSC, would illuminate us on the measures the present administration is taking to avoid a repetition of such a serious occurrence in the future.