Ongoing waste: Millions of litres of treated sewage dumped at sea
But can Malta reverse this trend to make the water re-usable for irrigation?
James Debono Every day for the past two years, Malta’s two sewage plants have been dumping over 60,000 barrels of treated sewage into the sea, a government spokesperson has confirmed.
The infrastructure ministry said a daily supply of 13,200 cubic metres is so far being dumped from the Cirkewwa and Gozo plants.
But Malta risks dumping over 60,000 cubic metres – over 270,000 barrels – into the sea when the new Xghajra plant starts treating the sewage, unless technology to re-use the treated water is not in place.
Malta’s problem with the treatment of sewage is its final usage: without the technology to make the treated water fit for agricultural use, or even potable for humans, the sewage will be dumped into the sea.
The Water Services Corporation is carrying out various tests, ranging from technology and operational studies to chemical and bacteriological ones, to assess the re-use potential of treated sewage water.
No decision has been taken on the kind of technology that will be used to make this water available for re-use.
According to the infrastructure ministry, “it is too early to discuss details at this time” and “various options” are still being considered.
The ministry has also not yet decided on the pricing of treated water, if this would be made available to the public. Only last year, Minister Austin Gatt 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.
Additionally, past studies say farmers are reluctant to pay for treated sewage water as long as they keep getting their water from boreholes, free of charge, even at the risk of over-extraction from the water table.
Rural Affairs Minister George Pullicino has however declared in parliament that while boreholes will be metered, farmers will continue extracting water used for irrigation for free.
Hydrologist Marco Cremona says this defies the purposes of metering, or controlling the boreholes: “Farmers will have no incentive to use treated sewage effluent instead of groundwater, which would still come for free. Meters will only have an academic or statistical purpose.”
So far, no money has been voted for the government’s commitment in the last budget to bolster the efforts to re-use the future reserve of 63,200 cubic metres of treated sewage, instead of dumping it in to the sea.
“The Water Services Corporation funds this work from its own financial resources,” the spokesperson for the Infrastructure Ministry said about the tests being conducted by the WSC on re-use potential.
In the budget speech, Finance Minister Tonio Fenech referred to tests being carried out to see how water derived from sewage treatment plants can be re-used to mitigate extraction from the water table, and to reduce the expenditure on reverse osmosis “which is costing the country hefty sums of money on electricity.”
The dumping of sewage water goes against global trends to re-use treated sewage in the form of ‘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. Even neighbouring Tunisia is using water produced from its sewage treatment plants for irrigation of crops and golf courses.
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