Treated waste water should be further filtered and used in agriculture and industry rather than dumped at sea, the Malta Water Association proposed yesterday.
The MWA called for a feasibility study to be carried out in order to establish the real cost of treating such water. It also suggested that a sewage discharge tariff, based on the Polluter Pays Principle, should be introduced for industries.
Association president Dirk De Ketelaere said Malta, with its extremely scarce water resources, could ill-afford not to make productive use of treated waste water.
Currently, there were three major barriers to using treated waste water, he said: overly high salt levels in the drainage system, negative perceptions of using waste water in agriculture, and poor enforcement of borehole extraction regulations.
“We are already paying for our drainage system,” said MWA member Vince Gauci, “but we are paying in the wrong way.” The public was financing Malta’s inefficient drainage system indirectly through government subsidies, he said.
Introducing a sewage discharge tariff, he suggested, would remove such inefficiencies, make the real cost of water more transparent and also bring Malta in line with EU legislation.
Hydrologist and MWA secretary Marco Cremona said reducing salt levels within the drainage system would require updated legislation on what could be pumped into the sewage system, as well as stricter enforcement of current legislation. Hotels, he said, sometimes used salt water in their toilet flushing systems. Reverse osmosis processes also often dumped salt into the drainage system.
Negative perceptions of waste water use, Mr Gauci said, could be overcome by offering such recycled water at a cheaper rate than that currently paid for by industries and agriculture. Demonstration projects in which recycled waste water was used alongside extracted water could also help allay scepticism. Mr Gauci suggested that Singapore, with its NEWater strategy, should serve as a model. Singapore derives over 30 per cent of its water supply from treated waste water.
Mr Cremona conceded that borehole extraction remained a problem. As long as borehole extraction remained free, there was little incentive for farmers and commercial entities to switch to a more sustainable source of water. Commercial boreholes, he in-sisted, should be banned. There was no reason why private companies should tap into a public resource – water – for free.
The hydrologist has long been a vociferous campaigner against what he says is the unsustainable over extraction of ground water.
The National Environment Policy, which was launched for consultation last week, made no direct reference to the recycling of waste water, Mr Cremona said. When asked whether the MWA intended to take part in the policy’s consultation process, Mr Cremona said that although various MWA members had been consulted in a private capacity, the MWA, as an organisation, had not been consulted.