The government’s pledge to take concerted action against the pollution emanating from the plethora of fish farms surrounding the Maltese Islands has not come a day too soon.

It is, after all, absolutely disgraceful that the country, with the assistance of the European Union, has invested several millions of euros in waste water treatment plants that have virtually saved Malta’s coastal waters from atrophy, only for that progress to be hampered by a profits-focussed private industry that has flouted the law with practical impunity, until now.

Back in 2003 Malta was pouring 25.8 million cubic metres of untreated raw sewage into the sea every year.  Doctors used to blame marine pollution for skin and ear infections during the swimming season. People were turning up at the hospital with rashes, and doctors could only warn people not to swim in contaminated seas.

But by 2006 Malta had made significant progress and a European Commission report for that year had stated that 96 per cent of Malta’s designated bathing sites were free from marine pollution and complied with EU standards, a far cry from previous assessments.

The reason was that by that time Malta had built those three sewage treatment plants and as a result no raw sewage is any longer being dumped at sea.

The notable decrease in rashes and infections in the swimming season and the clearer and colder seas around the islands are the best qualifications of what has been a significant improvement in not only bathing water but in our quality of life.

Thanks to these sewage treatment plants, Malta and its waters have come a long, long way over the last decade and a half, and the country will continue to reap the benefits over the next decades in terms of the tourism rewards and the even more tangible rewards in the improvement in the quality of all of our lives that comes with treating the county’s tens of millions of cubic metres sewage it produces every year.

That progress, however, has been counterbalanced by the slime being excreted from the fish farms surrounding the country by operators practicing environmentally-unfriendly feeding techniques, and exceeding their permit specifications with the number of cages and types of fish farmed.

Some companies, it transpires, have more cages than they are allowed and others have bigger or deeper cages than what is stipulated in their permits. Some are farming types of fish they are not allowed to breed.

The environment minister this week pledged that emergency enforcement notices are in the pipeline, commenting: “This situation is unacceptable and I will not permit any environmental damage or compromise to people’s health.”

But in its sudden bid for enforcement, inspired only be recent press reports of pollution seeping into swimming areas, the government must seek to strike a balance.  This is, after all, an industry that provided €1.1 million taxes last year, and that figure is forecast to rise to €2 million this year.  And although private industry needs to be allowed to continue to thrive, it must not be allowed to do so at the expense of the environment.  

New regulations are needed, and these must strike a balance between profitability and ensuring that the operators live up to their social corporate responsibilities in all its forms.