In what will undoubtedly be welcome news just as the swimming season gets underway, both the monitoring and overall quality of Malta’s bathing waters were yesterday shown to have improved dramatically over 2006 following a scathing EU assessment for the 2005 bathing season.
According to the annual bathing water report published by the European Commission yesterday, of Malta’s designated 87 coastal bathing sites, 96.6 per cent complied with mandatory water quality values in 2006, up from just 56.4 per cent in 2005.
83.9 per cent, meanwhile, complied with the more stringent guide values, as compared with just 50.6 per cent during the 2005 season.
EU regulations on bathing water quality require a range of bathing sites to be regularly monitored for coliforms, faecal coliforms, mineral oils, surface active substances and phenols.
The main driver behind the leap in quality control was the reduction in insufficiently sampled bathing areas. In 2005 the Maltese authorities failed to properly monitor more than half, 44 of 87, of its bathing sites. But after the fallout from 2005’s dismal report, all sites were monitored properly over 2006.
While no bathing areas were banned or de-listed last year, only three this year were found not complying with mandatory values are were red-listed by the EC.
These are the quay opposite Triq is-Salini in Marsascala, Mellieha Bay opposite Tunny Net, and Mistra Bay near the jetty.
A total of six beaches were similarly red-listed after the 2005 report - all different bathing sites than those red-listed yesterday and appear to have undergone significant environmental improvements over the last year, having failed water quality checks in 2005.
These were: Sliema’s Exiles and Ghar id-Dud beaches, the left-hand side of St George’s Bay, the right-hand side of Xlendi Bay, the area near the Marsascala waterpolo pitch, and the beach at the bottom of Wilga Street in Paceville.
Yesterday’s EC report cites the improvement registered by Malta as “remarkable” given the fact that it had only begun such inspections in 2005.
The report notes, “It must be remembered that the member states which have been monitoring their bathing water quality for years did not achieve the good results reported now until several years after they introduced these inspections.”
Additionally, of the 44 bathing sites not monitored properly in 2005, 40 now comply with the stringent guide values.
The report also observes how further improvements to Malta’s bathing water quality are expected through the expected construction of three new sewage treatment plants, one in the north and another in the south of Malta, as well as one in Gozo so as to comply with the Urban Waste Water Directive. The cost of the plants is estimated at EUR73 million. The report also refers to a national plan to relocate all fish farms to an area, in other words the Marsascala aquaculture zone, where they “should not pose any possible impacts on bathing areas”.