Seven months after taking office, the new Minister for Resources has begun to tackle what is probably one of Malta's most serious and life-threatening challenges: what to do about Malta's water supply and security. And, yet, it does not seem that the government really has any hurry in addressing the matter.
A 12-month moratorium has been placed over applications and permits for new water boreholes to be drilled in order to allow the government to take stock of the scale of (mostly illegal) extraction from the water table. The moratorium has been made in order to establish the number of boreholes that have been drilled since 1997.
In 1997, the Water Services Corporation had been officially notified of 6,000 boreholes but, since then, many more have been drilled. Incredibly, no official track record has been kept of how many, despite the fact that the 1997 legal notice laid down hefty fines for those who failed to notify the authorities. A case again, presumably, of enforcement of the law being notable by its absence.
Successive government administrations have ignored the problem for more than a decade even if they had been warned by hydrological experts as far back as six or seven years ago that Malta's mean sea level aquifer is at severe risk of being wiped out.
The importance of water as an essential resource of all life is self-evident. It is a vital requirement for good health, sanitation and is a critical contributor to almost all industrial production. It is of vital strategic, social and economic importance. Almost 60 per cent of the water is being produced by reverse osmosis plants at great cost. These costs will increase as the availability of fossil fuel dwindles, carbon pricing begins to bite and fuel subsidies by the government are removed.
Yet, the depletion of Malta's water table by illegal extraction is a continuing and urgent problem. The onset of global warming will deplete it even further. According to the minister, we are now extracting about 34 million cubic metres a year. That figure is 11 million cubic metres higher than recommended by the Malta Resources Authority for sustainable extraction. Farmers use about 18 million cubic metres of this, some of them from illegal boreholes.
As a result of the over-extraction, the mean sea level water aquifer is already in deficit. Increasing sea water intrusion and deterioration of the water table is already happening. Within a decade water could become undrinkable. Resources Minister George Pullicino has said that "the government plans to draw up a strategic plan on water production... by the beginning of next year". Given that a so-called National Water Policy was submitted to the last Minister of Resources three or four years ago and left languishing in the in-tray, it is unconscionable that this water production strategic plan should be delayed until next year, even if we are only talking of a few months. There seems no persuasive reason - other than ministerial and bureaucratic inertia - for this vitally important subject not to have been tackled with a greater sense of urgency. The registration of boreholes and the implementation of a long over-due national water policy can - and should - go hand in hand.
It is incomprehensible why the government should have delayed so long in taking the necessary practical steps on this issue.