The pumping station outside the SmartCity zone was decommissioned six months after the official opening of the project.
Winding up the debate on the financial estimates of the Water Services Corporation (WSC), Finance Minister Tonio Fenech made it clear that the contract with SmartCity entailed the decommissioning of the pumping station and not its removal.
He said that the full development permit for the new outflow was issued last October. The Ta’ Barkat pumping station was built in a record time of 21 months after the original site had to be relocated because of the SmartCity project. This was built according the best technology available and was similar to that built in Singapore.
Mepa wanted also the removal of large outflow pipe on the seabed but WSC were against this because of the financial outlay involved. The minister said that its re-moval would cause more harm than good to the underwater habitat.
Mr Fenech clarified that the Ta’ Barkat pumping station cost €55 million out of the €85 million allocated for three projects, including those at Mellieha and Gozo, because it was the largest one and treated 80 per cent of sewage before its outlet in the sea. There were problems on waste because illegal material was being disposed of in the system.
He said that the sludge from Ta’ Barkat pumping station was not dangerous to health but was still being transferred to the Magħtab landfill in covered skips.
Referring to the delay in operating the Mellieħa sewage plant, Mr Fenech said the contractor was responsible and was required to pay a €900,000 fine for not having finalised works on time. Similarly, the contractor responsible for the Gozo plant also defaulted and was fined €250,000 – the amount which Malta would have got in EU funds.
With respect to storm water, the government was working on a national project. Research showed that it was difficult to have enough reservoirs to catch all water which ran off in high volumes and high intensities. One therefore needed to divert the water, open blocked culverts or build tunnels below the roads.
The government had invested in pumping stations so much so that since 2006, all water that was dumped at sea was treated. Since then, the government was criticised for not taking measures for this water to be used. However, this means more water polishing and consequently more investment. Malta, Mr Fenech said, was the first EU member-state to treat all water before dumping it at sea.
Introducing the debate, Mr Fenech announced progress achieved over the past year by Arms Ltd in billing, the installation of smart meters and thousands of probes with old meters to determine real consumption. Mr Fenech said that to date more than 115,000 smart meters, or half the targeted amount, had been installed and automatic billing had started on more than 5,600 accounts. Many more meters would be installed next year.
By the end of the year Arms would have issued more than 1.27 million bills, or 32 per cent more than last year, due to higher frequency and regularity of billing. By the end of October more than 90 per cent of account holders were receiving more than four bills a year, with the target being of a bill every two months.
Only two per cent had not received a bill for 12 months or more, and the aim was to reduce this to one per cent.
The minister said that account holders who were eventually found to have over-paid due to inflated estimates would be refunded with six per cent interest.
More than 5,000 accounts were now direct-debit, and any other account holders who paid up within a fortnight benefited from a two per cent discount.
Minister Fenech said that Arms Ltd was giving results with creditor days dropped from 65 to 25 days this year. This led to the improvement of the cash flow for WSC and Enemalta by €25 million.
He made it clear that most suspensions of supply were as a last resort for abusers rather than social cases. With smart meters it would be possible to have power curtailment rather than suspend supply.
WSC’s extensive programme on apparent losses of produced water, which were being reduced every year and were now 14.6 per cent, included the installation of 53,000 meter probes, which would continue throughout the country.
Opposition spokesperson on utilities, Marlene Pullicino (PL) referred to the fact that half the quantity of smart meters had so far been installed. This meant that the government was only just starting to recoup the huge investment involved, which could not be called value for money.
She said the MRA had criticised the significant billing errors due to the inadequate level of analytical criteria maintained by Arms Ltd.
Dr Pullicino acknowledged that the WSC’s efficiency had increased, with great improvements on losses in Malta and even better in Gozo.
The opposition spokesman on infrastructure, Charles Buhagiar, said one of the most real difficulties in the handling of water was that there was no sole stakeholder and no coordination of efforts. The MRA was there to regulate and the WSC to produce and distribute, but the infrastructure was in the hands of other ministries, with neither of them seeming to be responsible for culverts and storage. There must be one single entity to handle all this, he said.