Malta gets high marks for bathing water quality
Malta continued to register very good results last year for the quality of its bathing water, according to a European Commission report released in Brussels yesterday. The report shows that last year, 95.4 per cent of the island's coastal bathing water...
Malta continued to register very good results last year for the quality of its bathing water, according to a European Commission report released in Brussels yesterday. The report shows that last year, 95.4 per cent of the island's coastal bathing water met the mandatory quality values set by the EU while 89.7 per cent met even more stringent values.
The report, however, states that four bathing areas (4.6 per cent) were still not compliant with the mandatory values, an increase of one percentage point over 2006.
In four bathing areas, swimming was prohibited at some point last year, one in Gozo and the rest in Malta. The Times is informed that these included Balluta Bay and Fond Għadir in Sliema, and Mellieħa Bay.
Sources close to the Commission said this does not mean these bathing areas had swimming prohibitions for the entire season but were found to be of poor quality at some time.
Testing of bathing waters last year started in mid-May and ended in mid-October. Since the start of reporting when Malta joined the EU, 87 bathing waters are being monitored by the Maltese authorities on a weekly basis and are checked for levels of microbiological parameters including coliforms and faecal coliforms and physic-chemical paraments which include mineral oils, surface active substances and phenols.
Brussels said Malta has made great strides forward since it started monitoring its waters.
According to the Commission, public access to data on bathing water monitoring is also being given importance, so much so that during the bathing season, the government's environmental health unit issues a weekly report with the classification for each bathing area. These reports are available on a public-accessed website and are also sent to local councils and the media.
The responsibility for the quality of bathing waters is shared between the environmental health unit within the Department of Health and the Environment Protection Directorate within the Malta Environment and Planning Authority.