NEWS | Wednesday, 11 March 2009

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James Debono
No regulations exist to limit the amount of water extracted from the water table that is delivered by 411 “registered” bowsers operating on Malta’s roads.
But only 17 of these bowsers are actually licensed to carry drinking water.
“There are no regulation in place which set a limit on the amount of water carried by bowsers,” Resources Minister George Pullicino said in reply to a question by Labour environment spokesperson Leo Brincat.
Pullicino also confirmed that the government does not have a clue of how much drinking water and second-class water was transported by bowsers over the past two years. Nor are bowser owners charged for the extraction of water from the water table.
The Ministry for Resources does not even exercise any monitoring on bowsers, which are regulated only by a legal notice issued 12 years ago, which obliges bowser owners to register their vehicles.
“This legal notice does not impose any conditions and registration should only be considered as a temporary permit,” Pullicino told parliament.
Currently only 17 bowsers are registered to carry drinking water: 354 are registered to carry second-class water used for irrigation, and 40 to carry drainage.
The Malta Resources Authority has recently warned that tankers used to carry water are to be registered on pain of legal action. The warning forms part of the government’s efforts to crack down on illegal borehole drilling and water transportation.
Extraction of groundwater is estimated at about 34 million cubic metres a year, 11 million cubic metres more than the MRA’s recommendations for sustainable extraction.
Last year the government published legal notices providing that no new boreholes can be drilled for groundwater extraction and all unregistered boreholes have to be registered.
Replying to a parliamentary question last month, Resources Minister George Pullicino said there were 2,643 registered boreholes.

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