Marco Cremona, who is well-known for his opinions on water use and abuse, had this to say after Monday’s monsoon that hit the Maltese islands: “87.3mm of rain on the Maltese Islands’ surface area of 316 square kilometres equates to the skies dumping 27.6 million cubic metres in a few hours, more than the total amount of water produced by the Water Services Corporation (RO and groundwater combined) in a year !!!
“My guess is that less than 10% of this water was collected in cisterns that may be found in private dwellings. Roadside reservoirs and dams did not collect a significant amount of this water because (1) in the main part, they have been abandoned over the years and (2) those that actually work were already full with the water collected from previous rain events in September and October.
“By far, the bulk of the water (90% plus) found its way to the sea in a disorganised fashion, causing havoc and damage along the way. “
By now, the lore of what happened on our roads on Monday morning has been posted on YouTube and similar quirky entries, made even more quirky this Halloween week with coffins dancing on the waters.
Seriously, however, while we rejoice that there were no fatal accidents, the sight of all that water rushing off to the sea provides us once again with an insight into a grossly wasteful country and people – ours. This is not the only example, there are others that are even more damaging, but this example is highly significant.
Our country has always received less rain than it needed, and over the centuries our fathers inventively created many ways to capture water, hold it and use it for irrigation.
Malta has two valley systems that scientists have even been known to call them river-valleys, both originating outside Rabat and both heading to the sea, ending up one in Marsa and the other in Salini. These river-valleys had their own self-contained ecology. But both and also the secondary tributaries feeding into them have been destroyed beyond recognition because of greed, because of people grabbing for their own benefit and defrauding the rest, etc.
Conceptually, it was then but a short step from the destruction of river-valleys to the enormous amount of building that has taken place over the past few decades which has turned whole areas of Malta into a conglomeration of buildings and streets, with no water catchment facilities (for even the old law that every house must have its own well has fallen into abeyance) and which thus whenever it rains more than a small drizzle, turn the usual culprit streets into raging rivers. Hence Valley Road Msida, Qormi valley, etc.
Each time there is a flash flood, we see the pictures, shake our heads at our own folly, and promptly forget all about it.
It was instructive and equally depressing to hear the explanation given in Parliament some months ago why the roadside reservoirs are no longer maintained: such reservoirs need proper maintenance which costs money, which is simply not there. So let all the water flow down to the sea and if possible, facilitate its path, so that after a few hours there is no trace at all of such providential gift which we have allowed to squander.
This from a country which, to get the bulk of its water, uses a system that is so wasteful of electricity, whose costs are quite high. This from a country which also allows whoever wants to, to just dig a hole and pump up the water in the watertable for free, as if that is a free-for-all resource.
In a different country, the rainwater rushing down to the sea would have been better harnessed and made to produce growth and indeed life. Here rainwater many times leads to waste, if not to damage to property and possibly to people.