The recently announced increase in the reliance on reverse osmosis plants for Malta’s water supply is a sign that the quality of the country’s groundwater is deteriorating, expert hydrologist Marco Cremona told The Malta Independent.

Speaking in Parliament on Monday, Energy Minister Joe Mizzi announced that reverse osmosis plants across Malta and Gozo will be upgraded so that they can produce more water with less energy, with the end goal being that groundwater extraction is reduced from 50% to 30%.

Reacting to this news, Cremona said that, while the reduction of energy consumption is positive and that he is not against the use of reverse osmosis, the Water Services Corporation (WSC)’s reduced reliance on groundwater is not something being done “out of good will”, but because the quality of the groundwater is deteriorating to the point that it is unusable.

Groundwater is, in essence, the water found underground in the cracks and spaces between rocks and soil.

However since this groundwater is not actually visible, Cremona said, it is neglected.  This is a pity because, if of good quality, groundwater is always cheaper than water obtained through reverse osmosis, Cremona continued.

It is true that if the WSC extracts less groundwater, there is less damage, Cremona admitted, but the problem is, he said, that the WSC is not the only entity which is extracting groundwater; the private sector also carries out such extractions and they are pretty much unregulated.

“If I was in a situation to do something I would nationalise groundwater as a national resource, not leave people to do anything they want without any controls or quotas, as is the situation today”, Cremona said.

Despite technological advancement in reverse osmosis and the country’s positive economic performance, the problem with producing more through reverse osmosis is two-fold, he said.

The first problem is economic – groundwater is cheaper than reverse osmosis, and Cremona believes that it should be used by the WSC over the private sector.  The second problem is in terms of strategy, he explained.

“We are putting all our eggs in one basket”, he continued. Asked about the dangers of over reliance on reverse osmosis, he expanded by saying that for reverse osmosis to work, the sea must be uncontaminated – so if there is an accident or oil spill, there are automatically problems – and that a reverse osmosis plant takes up a huge amount of electricity which, in the case of an outage, cannot be recuperated through a simple standby generator.

“If anything happen to the national power supply, part of which depends on a cable in Sicily, we are out of water within hours, and we will not have access to groundwater as we’d have destroyed it; if, for any reason – be it terrorism, sabotage, malfunction, fire, or electricity – the plant stops operating, we are immediately in a crisis situation”, he warned. 

He noted that the reason for the WSC’s decision to decrease its reliance on groundwater is because it is increasingly deteriorating and is not a good source of potable water anymore.

“There are many things one can do to restore groundwater without reducing the WSC’s consumption; namely reducing or controlling the private sector’s level of extraction”, he said.

“For me it is a sign that the WSC is abandoning groundwater as they are seeing that it is a resource that is not of high enough quality to use – and that for me sounds alarm bells; that the public entity, which has cheap access to this resource, is abandoning it – the situation must be getting really bad”, he lamented.

Asked if he had any indication on the current state of Malta’s groundwater, Cremona said that it was difficult to calculate and that the WSC would have more information and data on the matter; however he too has empirical data through private sector clients which show that the situation is deteriorating.

“There is no deterrent for anyone to dig boreholes and extract groundwater, especially in times of drought; the only deterrent now is that the water being extracted contains salt – meaning that it has already been ruined”, he said.

Cremona lamented that there is a conflict between what he is saying and what the government is reporting the European Union, wherein they are “miraculously” saying that the situation with regards to groundwater is improving.  He said however that if one talks to farmers and those with private whether the situation is better or worse – they will say that it is worse. “The evidence is as I have said – that is the reality”, he concluded.