Making the best use of ground water

Marco Cremona (The Sunday Times, November 22) states that the ground water situation is getting messier by the minute. He states this without making any reference to the importance of the ongoing process to register hawkers who trade ground water for commercial purposes.

A media event was organised last week to advertise this but Mr Cremona still feels that the government, and indeed farmers, should do more to use treated sewage effluent for farming purposes. Until this happens, he claims, ground water remains vulnerable.

Mr Cremona quotes the minister saying that water will continue to be provided to farmers. Yet, he fails to refer to he Ministry of Resources and Rural Affairs (MRRA) and the Water Services Corporation working on a joint project to use treated sewage effluent for farming purposes in Gozo.

The MRRA wants to safeguard the interests of farmers. We will work hard with them to ensure that wasteful irrigation practices are curtailed.

We will continue to develop skills and technologies so that the use of water by the farming community will not continue to be a burden. We will ensure that the protection of our ground water is achieved by taking sequential steps forward as we have already shown we would.