In Dr. Gordon Knox’s article “Water – A Crisis?” published in October 2008, 2.5% of Earth’s surface water is in the form of freshwater, the rest is considered salt water. Of the 2.5%, 68.9% is locked in ice, 30.8% is groundwater and 0.3% is in lakes and rivers spread across the world. A very small amount of freshwater is available for the world, and we are running out.
The last few days in Malta were jam packed with information about Malta's position and future concerning water and the limited amount within the boundaries of the tiny country. The Malta Water Association is focusing on spreading the awareness about the critical condition that Malta is in. I was able to meet with 4 of the about 15 members of the Malta Water Association (MWA) and discuss their opinions.
In an interview, Mr. Julian Mamo, Water Engineer and Member of the MWA, described the decrease in knowledge about water scarcity. He described how his grandparents were very aware of the water levels, because they were required to use the rivers and cisterns spread throughout the island. When the three reverse osmosis plants that currently run were built, however, many people stopped worrying about water. Where as before you had to walk down to the local cistern or river, now all that needed to be done was turn the faucet on. Water became more accessible, more easily attainable, and therefore less of a concern.
According to the members of the MWA, Malta's freshwater aquifers will not last, with it even being predicted that it's end will be during our lifetime. There are two freshwater aquifers in Malta, the Perched and the Mean Sea Level. The Perched Aquifer sits above Malta's Blue Clay layer and the Mean Sea Level lies just under the island, above the very salty, very dense sea water of the Mediterranean and under the Lower Coralline Limestone layer.
In the recent past and today, the freshwater aquifers are being depleted faster than they can be replenished by rainwater, due to numerous boreholes that have been drilled through the layers of rock and clay and pump up unknown amounts of water daily. There are about 8,000 registered boreholes, with thousands of other unregistered, and unwatched. One would think that the solution, then, is simple; register all the boreholes and use technology to watch the amounts of water that are being pumped up through them. However, questions arise on how to do this. How would you find every unregistered borehole? Could you make people register something they don’t claim to have? How much money would have to go into a project like this to see a successful completion? The answer: a lot. Short of visiting every home in Malta, there is no for sure way to record how many boreholes there are or whether or not people have them.
According to “Water – A Crisis?” in 2007, the measured ground water that was being extracted through registered boreholes was about 13.4 million cubic meters per year. Estimating for the unregistered boreholes, add 16 million cubic meters and there is a grand total of about 29.4 million cubic meters per year being pumped up from the freshwater aquifers.
Another threat to the aquifers is contamination. The Perched Aquifer sits just below many farms and fields, and with the increasing use of pesticides and chemicals for growing crops is in danger of being contaminated. The chemicals used for plants and fertilizers seep down through the rock layers and into the Perched Aquifer, and as Dr. Gordon Knox stated during an interview, once an aquifer is contaminated, there is nothing you can do to clean it there. You would need to pump up the water and clean it through a plant, taking millions of dollars and a lot of time.
The Mean Sea Level Aquifer is also in danger of being contaminated, but by multiple factors. The first factor is the same as the Perched Aquifer, chemicals from fertilizers and pesticides. In the same way that the chemicals seep through to get to the Perched Aquifer, the Mean Sea Level Aquifer has chemicals dripping into it through the rock layers above. It has been estimated that it can take up to 40 years for the farming chemicals to filter through the rock layers and into the aquifers, which means that the chemicals that are reaching the aquifers now, are from the 1970s. Usage of chemicals and pesticides has only increased since that time, which would implicate that there are many more chemicals dripping through the rock and will infiltrate the aquifer in the near future.
As if this wasn’t concerning enough, another factor that plays a large role in the contamination of the Mean Sea Level Aquifer is the sea itself. The freshwater that sits above the dense, salty seawater is a lens, protected by the bottommost rock layer. Currently only the edges of the freshwater lens gets contaminated by the salt water, however as the freshwater is depleted, more and more freshwater is mixed with salt water, making the aquifer less and less usable for the Maltese without first going through the reverse osmosis plants, taking time and money.
There are numerous other opinions and questions that arise when discussing the Malta water situation. However, one detail has come up time and time again, something must be done. The MWA specifically is trying to spread awareness about the increasingly concerning situation. The educational system has also begun to put effort into changing this lack of awareness, by adding a new chapter to the teaching curriculum and teaching young children about water and Malta. Thus the process has begun, but its not enough. For people to simply be aware isn’t enough to solve the problem, action must be taken and taken quickly.
The future of Malta at this moment is cloudy. There is no way to confidently predict what will happen when. So whether Malta will be able to begin saving its aquifers and using its own water or whether the reverse osmosis plants will be run at full power and glass bottles of water will be continually shipped from Italy, is uncertain. At the rate that Malta is going, it seems that rescued aquifers are a long shot and the reverse osmosis plants will need to increase production to serve the islands of Malta.
