In an opinion piece entitled Better Management Of Water (April 27), Petra Bianchi, the new director for environment protection at Mepa says that “the registration and metering of boreholes is being introduced, which aims to control the extraction of groundwater. A fair price should be paid by all who benefit from this limited resource, to promote the efficient and sustainable use of water”.

The last sentence is very worrying. In my view, it means that Dr Bianchi supports the idea that private borehole owners should be allowed to pump out public water and made to pay a “fair price” for the water. I disagree with this way of thinking and will explain why.

Groundwater (pumped through boreholes) is generally of an inferior quality to town water but in most cases it is quite suitable as a substitute to town water. As such any authority trying to establish a price for privately extracted groundwater will probably set a price for groundwater of anywhere between zero (as it is today) up to a maximum that does not exceed the cost of mains water tariff – for who would pump up water that has an inferior quality to mains water if the price were the same?

If borehole water were to be charged, the option of having access to a cheap source of fresh water will only be available to those who do not own a borehole. It should be noted that all private boreholes were drilled illegally (even if they were drilled 20 or 30 years ago, and subsequently registered), because no drilling permits were issued in the last 40-50 years – except for boreholes drilled by the public water utility for the public water supply. This means that the option of giving access to a cheaper source of water is only being made available to those who, at some stage, broke the law – and not to every law-abiding citizen in the country.

The implication of Dr Bianchi’s statement is that those who illegally drilled a borehole and have benefited from the free use of public water for private use for a number of years are now being given the right to continue to avail themselves of a cheaper source of water than the rest of the law-abiding population which is not being given this possibility. Incredible.

It should be pointed out that each drop of water being pumped out by a borehole is one drop less in our groundwater reserves which means one drop more to be produced by our reverse osmosis plants, and paid for – wait for it! – by the rest of the population who do not have a borehole.

A fundamental law in environmental protections is the “polluter-pays principle”. What Dr Bianchi is effectively saying is not only that the polluter would not be made to pay a single cent for breaking the law and polluting our groundwater reserves (seawater intrusion resulting from pumping water by boreholes) for years on end, but he/she will be given the privilege to continue to pollute (pump up water) to the detriment of the non-polluter!

Is this the kind of social justice the new director for environment protection wants to impart? It is even more worrying to know that until a few months ago Dr Bianchi was heading a leading environmental NGO.

I expect Dr Bianchi to retract her statement immediately and confirm that in her tenure she will strive to ensure that our environment assets will be made accessible to all indiscriminetly and that the principle of social justice prevails in all her decisions.