Water, water, everywhere going to waste

If there was ever proof needed that our country desperately needs a good and efficient water management system, this photo, taken last week by a group of tourists that I happened to meet, says it all. The picture shows rainwater ending up directly in the sea at Xlendi.

Rainwater, that precious resource that is finite and the absence of which is killing millions of people in Africa and elsewhere, is wasted in Malta and instead, we, the taxpayers, have to pay millions of euros a year in the production of potable water through our power-hungry reverse osmosis plants.

Enough said. The picture says it all: We have the natural resource but we prefer to produce water at a terrible cost to the country and, what is more vile, at an even higher cost to the environment, because we not only are unable to use this natural resource but we have to use another one (for which we, taxpayers, are paying) in order to produce it.

Someone will bring the excuse that we have made strides, these past few years, in somehow mitigating this problem through the infrastructure.

Well, the use of our reverse osmosis plants and the photo above show that it is simply not enough.