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.
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Galea. L
Nov 29th 2009, 21:09
Keith Galea
Your department and indeed the rest of all the ministers including the prime minister himself are no longer believed by the vast majority of Maltese citizens. If Eddie Fenech Adami and Gonzi really wanted to solve the water situation why didn't they do anything to save the millions upon millions of gallons of water that we get from rainfall and allow it to simply flow into the sea? Why didn't they continue to repair Wied il-Qlejha? Is it because it was being repaired by the Labour Government? Why are the sewage treatment plants not filtering sewage enough for it to be used in agriculture and for watering the trees and not let trees die in the summer heat and lack of water in summer? Credibility? Consistency? They do not exist in PN governments.
Joe Morana
Nov 29th 2009, 10:36
MRRA credibility is zilch as regards effective control regarding the exploitation of underground water resources. MRRA only acted to regulate underground water exploitation abuse because of EU sanctions. Please respect our intelligence. Thank you.
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