Although Malta is now treating raw sewage before it’s dumped into sea, there is no intention of re-using second-class water unless people pay for it

James Debono
Transport, Infrastructure and Communications Minister Austin Gatt has confirmed that a daily supply of 6,500 cubic metres of water from the Mellieha sewage treatment plant is currently being pumped out into the sea.
The sewage water is being treated in the Mellieha plant for dangerous bacteria, before being disposed of into the sea. Operations started last week.
But the dumping goes against global trends to re-use treated sewage as ‘second-class water’ for irrigation and industrial purposes, and sometimes even as drinking water as in countries like Singapore which derive 15% of their water supply from treated sewage.
Gatt has made it clear that since this water cannot be recycled and used for irrigation unless it is ‘polished’ – namely, treated again to make it suitable for re-use purposes – the government will only invest in this process if farmers are willing to pay for it.
“If farmers start paying for this water, we will invest in another plant to polish this water.”
But Gatt expressed his disagreement with environmentalists who argue that treated water should be delivered for free to farmers to encourage them to use it, instead of illegally extracting water from boreholes.
The extraction of water from boreholes risks endangering Malta’s water table, as over-extraction allows a greater seepage of nitrates into the underground sources.
According to the government’s conservative figures, Malta is extracting 34 million cubic metres a year of cheap underground water. That is 11 million cubic metres more than the Malta Resources Authority’s recommendations for sustainable extraction.

Alternative to boreholes?
Following last Tuesday’s announcement by Resources and Rural Affairs Minister George Pullicino that borehole users will face stiff fines if they fail to register their boreholes, Austin Gatt went one step further arguing that registered borehole users should be charged for their consumption.
But although Gatt wants to charge for the use of borehole water, he said the price of providing polished, treated sewage to farmers will remain prohibitive.
Gatt hinted that the cost of creating the appropriate infrastructure for the re-use of this water does not make it viable to provide it to farmers free of charge. “To deliver this water one needs to pump it uphill and this requires vast amounts of energy. If we give it to farmers for free we will have to put the cost on households. Should we do this? Someone has to pay for it.”
George Pullicino was more open to the possibility of re-using a daily supply of over 72,000 cubic metres of treated sewage from Malta’s three sewage treatment plants when they are fully operational by the end of 2009. “This should be part of the wider picture and strategy but one should remember that although this water is treated from dangerous bacteria, it remains too saline to be used directly by farmers,” Pullicino said.
But as long as water from boreholes is not metered and free of charge, there is practically no incentive for farmers to use the second-class water anyway, especially if they are expected to pay for its use.
The environmental impact assessment for Mellieha’s ic-Cumnija plant claims 29% of the water it treats can be re-used, but only if this comes at no cost to the user.
Ghallis, an area closer to agricultural land that already takes low quality water with high levels of salinity, would have been a better site than Mellieha. But the Water Services Corporation deemed the infrastructural costs of diverting the sewage infrastructure from the Mellieha sewage outfall to Ghallis, too prohibitive. Instead it opted to develop the sewage plant on the same site of the former sewage outfall.

Singapore’s ‘new water’
And as Malta dumps its first supply of treated sewage into the sea, so-called “new water” sewage treatment plants already provide 15% of Singapore’s water needs.
At the opening of the largest “new water” plant in 2007, Singapore prime minister Lee Hsien Loong declared that “new water allows us to use each drop of water more than once, and so multiply our effective supply of water”.
Singapore has four recycling plants which use advanced membrane technologies. The water is re-used in industrial processes that require ultra-clean water, such as electronics, petrochemicals and wafer fabrication.
“New water”, which according to Singaporean authorities only costs $0.65 per cubic metre, is even used for drinking although only when mixed with reservoir water in small quantities.
And in the drought-stricken Australian state of Queensland, plans are under way to introduce “recycled sewage” into the drinking water supply. Premier Peter Beattie warned that other Australian states would be forced to use purified wastewater for drinking if the current 100-year drought continues. Despite Beattie’s sense of emergency, Australia still fares much better than Malta as regards water availability, and is currently ranked in 40th place – calculated on a per-capita basis, Malta is actually the ninth thirstiest country in the world.

jdebono@mediatoday.com.mt