Malta’s lack of a water policy institute makes it “highly vulnerable to bad advice” about the scarce resource from political and commercial interests, local experts have warned.

And with no up-to-date information on what, and how much, goes into and out of local aquifers, authorities must make do with estimates “from undocumented sources, many contradictory”, the Malta Water Association has said.

Establishing a water institute would help plug the Government’s knowledge gap on the way to creating a National Water Plan to better manage existing water reserves, the association believes.

All three political parties have acknowledged that such a national plan is needed, although details have been fairly sketchy so far.

The MWA has now released a 14-page report proposing the steps needed to turn talk of a national water plan into a reality by the middle of this legislature.

Malta’s water problems – it is the only EU state classified as being in a state of “absolute water scarcity” and must contend with more than 90 per cent of its aquifers having nitrate levels higher than permissible levels – stand in stark contrast to its water policy vacuum.

Filling that vacuum will require a radical shift in the way the Maltese think of water and its availability, the report acknowledges, given existing “ambiguous and often dysfunctional” governance structures which prioritise politically-motivated decisions over sound long-term planning.

It identifies four key water-related issues which need tackling: unmetered extraction from private boreholes; lapsed regulations which required all buildings to provide for rainwater catchment; “opaque” subsidies factored into water tariffs; and high levels of nitrate pollution within groundwater reserves.

The report suggests creating a specialised water policy coordination unit within the Office of the Prime Minister to drive the creation of a national plan forward.

A specialised, separate stakeholder task force would be tasked with auditing Malta’s existing water resources, collecting all available data and putting it together to create what the MWA describes as a “water policy framework”.

In the meantime, policy coordination unit experts would look into alternative water uses such as making urban storm water drinkable and aquifer recharge technologies. The unit would also be responsible for launching pilot projects testing the feasibility of such ideas.

Although pilot studies into such concepts are already underway, they have so far not been linked together under the aegis of an overriding national water policy.

A national water plan based on the coordination unit recommendations should not take any longer than three years to complete, the MWA report argues.

But any strategy adopted will only succeed if the Government remains strong in the face of political expediency, they warn.

“It is the first duty of the Government to tell the public the truth,” the report writers note, “not to cloak the truth for fear of controversy”.