The poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge – The Rime of the Ancient Mariner – contains the words “Water, water, everywhere, but not a drop to drink”. The poem could have well been written about Malta, a small island surrounded by the sea with negligible natural water sources.
On the occasion of World Water Day, The National Statistics office released figures related to the consumption of water in Malta, and the findings are rather worrying. In an eight-year period, water use had increased by a staggering 34%. The same figures indicated that Malta’s water resources were rated as stressed to severely stressed.
When we factor in that Malta’s only natural water resources are the water table and precipitation, the picture is not all that rosy. For many years, unchecked borehole extraction was the order of the day, but there have been recent efforts to curb the trend. Almost 50% of all water use is in agriculture.
There is no doubt that climate change is real and that weather patterns are changing. Malta has learned to make potable drinking water from the sea, and treated sewage waste produces water that is clean enough to be used for agricultural purposes. But it also comes at a cost. Each unit of water that is produced through reverse osmosis is more expensive than a unit of electricity.
Malta must harvest more rainwater. As we mentioned before, weather patterns are changing and while winters are getting wetter, our summers are becoming hotter and longer lasting, leading to months where no precipitation whatsoever falls over our islands. The government has announced plans to increase flood water caches. But while the flood relief works seem to be paying dividends in some places, the onus was on funnelling waters away from flood prone areas. Some reservoirs have been built, but judging by the sheer volume of water that ends up flowing out to sea, it is clear that there is still a lot of waste.
Some corporations around the world are pushing to remove the need for water as a human right. Water around the world is becoming scarcer and scarcer and desertification is leading to more and more sources drying up.
While the government ought to increase storage facilities for water, we, as citizens also need to do our bit. The adage “every single drop counts” could not be a truer expression in this day and age.
We need to make sure that we do not waste water. Forgetting the financial aspect of things, people must be made aware of the problem and encouraged and educated so as not to waste water on a daily basis. Conservation of water in the home can be done in many ways, from something as simple as turning off the tap while brushing teeth, installing a float in a toilet cistern and replacing appliances with newer ones that have more economical water consumption rates. We also forget that many older Maltese properties have wells and these can also be used to complement the mains supply. The government could also consider buying water from such households in a similar way to how electricity generated by solar panels is sold back into the grid.