Tancred Tabone, who was reported to have said that raising the price of water is one of the best forms of conservation (June 26), is right, of course. I too believe this is necessary but I also believe it is nowhere near sufficient. Unless it is accompanied – preceded, even – by other practical measures, an increase in the price of water would serve only to finance waste, inefficiency, irresponsibility, abuse, unlawfulness and sleaze.

It is these circumstances that are the real prime cause behind our water problem, not the aridity of our climate, as we so often conveniently like to assert.

Two examples will, I hope, illustrate how insufficient it would be to merely charge more to conserve water.

Towards the end of 2011, The Times reported that the Malta Environment and Planning Authority had given its go-ahead for the construction of a 2.7 kilometre storm water tunnel in the south of Malta that was estimated to cost €55 million (partly funded by the EU).

This tunnel was purportedly planned for completion in 2013 when every year it would start dumping an estimated 650,000 cubic metres of storm water into the sea, from where it will then be re-extracted by reverse osmosis.

Without a radical change in mentality, an increase in the price of water would merely go to finance this kind of capital project aimed at throwing away the very same water for which the consumer is made to pay a higher price due to its scarcity.

A truly vicious circle if there ever was one.

At the beginning of the year, a reader of The Times wrote in to complain about the overflowing sewers we tend to get during a stiff downpour. A few days later the head of the PR department of the Water Services Corporation wrote in to explain why the sewers overflow, in particular, because “there are many hundreds if not thousands of buildings that have the storm water system of their roofs and yards irregularly connected to the public sewer system”. So, what we have here is a corporation – the WSC – which is responsible at law for our public sewers, which is manifestly aware of “many hundreds if not thousands” of irregularities that adversely affect the effective functioning of the sewers falling under its responsibility but which does nothing about the matter except, that is, to get the head of its PR department to write in with a puerile attempt at exonerating the WSC from any responsibility.

Once again, devoid of a radical change in mentality, an increase in the price of water would merely serve to finance this laid-back and crassly irresponsible attitude.

To ensure that the consumer gets a fair deal from the water services monopoly it would perhaps pay to incorporate any increase in water tariffs in a charter which also sets clear, specific, tangible and measurable targets for the service provider and the other responsible entities and links these targets to the price of water.

Thus, for example, dumping 650,000 cubic metres of rainwater into the sea would compel the WSC to decrease the price of water, while storing the same amount of rainwater in basins, reservoirs or even the aquifer would entitle it to increase the price of water to assist it in recovering the capital outlay and meeting the repairs and maintenance costs.

With this approach, any increase in the price of water would amount to a sound investment in the management of our water resources, an investment that in the long term would pay back generous dividends not only to ourselves but also to future generations.