Raising the price of water is one of the best forms of conservation, according to the president of the Malta Chamber of Commerce, Enterprise and Industry, Tancred Tabone.
“Unfortunately, one of the best forms of conservation is tariffs. Anything that is free or easily available is not appreciated and is abused,” Mr Tabone, a former chairman of the Water Services Corporation, said.
At the same time, he warned of the need to consider the impact of high tariffs on businesses. Mr Tabone was speaking at the national water conference held on Friday, two weeks after the launch of the Water Policy for the Maltese Islands.
The well-attended conference tackled water consumption and ways to deal with water scarcity.
Mr Tabone said recycling would also help tackle the water shortage problem.
“Recycling allows us to use the same water twice but as a country we have been missing out on this opportunity,” he said, noting that the WSC planned to upgrade sewage treatment plants to recycle water.
He added the Maltese people should emulate their forefathers, who practised efficient water collection.
According to Malta Resources Authority hydrologist Manuel Sapiano, the issue of water scarcity in Malta dates back millennia and the island first experimented with distillation in the 1880s.
At present, water availability per capita in Malta is the lowest in Europe and the island was one of the world’s top 10 countries for water scarcity, he noted.
While water demand in Malta stood at 60 million cubic metres, supply was below 30 million.
50%
more groundwater is extracted than what is recharged on an annual basis.
€2.30 – €5.41: Respectively, the domestic and commercial price for one cubic metre of tap water.
€125 – €150: Respectively, the domestic and commercial price for one cubic metre of bottled water.
“We need to stretch our supply to make our available water last as much as possible,” Geoffrey Saliba, who is managing a two-year project that analyses the water consumption of large businesses, told the conference. The project, called EU Life+ Investing in Water, is helping businesses and hotels cut their bills by reducing consumption. Results from the project’s first audits at 20 businesses and 19 hotels between February and April were presented during the conference.
It was concluded that 85 per cent of businesses and 75 per cent of hotels could cut consumption by at least 10 per cent if they followed a set of standards drawn up by the project. These included setting shower water flow rates to seven litres per minute, hand wash basin flow to five litres per minute and flushing volume to six litres.
The shower water flow of the audited businesses and hotels varied between four and 24 litres. Water treatment engineer Marco Cremona said the audits were carried out through one-to-one meetings and questionnaires with three, four and five-star hotels and a representative selection of businesses from the pharmaceutical, manufacturing, beverage, servicing and office industries.
“We found businesses sitting on rainwater that they don’t use,” Dr Cremona said.
Out of the 20 businesses surveyed, only three practise rainwater harvesting, while two resort to water bowsers and one has a registered borehole.
When it comes to first-class water used by hotels, only one harvests rain-water. However, for second-class water, hotels use a variety of resources, including grey-water recycling and reverse osmosis. One hotel has its own sewage treatment plant.