Agius wants NAO probe into sewage treatment plants

Nationalist candidate for Europe, Peter Agius, wants the National Audit Office to audit €60 million in European funds he claims have not achieved their purpose.

The funds in question had to lead to the treatment of all urban and rural sewage, the production of polished, second-class water delivered to farmers as ‘new water’, and the treatment of sewage effluent before it is dumped at sea.

“In spite of this spend, with the treatment plants having been built and the government toasting its successes, it is clear that practically all these deliverables have not been fully attained,” Agius said in his letter to the Auditor General.

Agius is claiming that ‘new water’, the polished, second-class water that is produced from sewage and then re-used only for agricultural purposes, has not been distributed to all farmers across the island.

The water is delivered from the treatment plants to card-operated dispensers in agricultural zones, but not every farmer has received a steady stream of the nutrient-rich water, Agius said. “In the last years, farmers who have become dependent on the supply of new water were this summer left without any supply for days on end.”

Agius said the lack of new water had affected farmers in Żabbar, Mellieħa and Gozo, who lost out on crop yields due to the absence of the daily supply, which at one point was restricted to just once a week throughout the hot summer.

Agius said he was ready to supply the NAO with the contacts of the affected farmers.

In two other complaints to the NAO, Agius said that the Malta’s WSC was also pumping out untreated sewage or sewage that had not been treated to the levels required at law into the sea. He specifically referred to health warnings on sewage at sea issued for the bays of St George’s, Balluta, Qajjenza, Buġibba, and Fond Għadir and Qui Si Sana in Sliema.

Agius added that in May 2023, the European Commission notified Malta that it had not taken the necessary measures to ensure that urban run-off in the Malta South and North agglomerations enters the sewage system to be given secondary treatment, before it is discharged at sea.

This letter of formal notice from the EC is now the subject of an infringement procedure against Malta. “This action from the Commission clearly shows that Malta is not delivering the outcomes that are tied to these European funds, that is for sewage to be treated before being discharged at sea. Indeed, through periodical testing, the Commission is showing that Malta is discharging sewage at sea in the north, from the Ċumnija plant in Mellieħa, as well as from the Barkat plant in the south,” Agius said.

“These reports show the Maltese government and its responsible authorities for EU funds and water management, are not in line with the obligations tied to these funds. The public is suffering for their incompetence and lack of planning... the public is owed a clear audit on the spending of tax money and the breach of environmental standards.”

The Commission referred Malta to the Court of Justice of the European Union for failure to comply with the Urban Wastewater Treatment Directive, which requires it to ensure the proper collection and treatment of wastewater.

The Commission says that while wastewater is being directed to treatment plants, such as the ones in Mellieħa and Xgħajra, the waste waters exiting the treatment plants do not meet the quality requirements of the directive.

This is particularly the case for the ‘Malta North' agglomeration. This situation is mainly due to the discharge of animal waste by farmers into the municipal wastewater system, a long-standing problem, which hampers the performance of the treatment plants and for which the authorities have not yet found solutions.

The New Water programme has an annual production capacity of 7 million cubic metres of high-quality water and has the potential to address up to 35% of the current total water demand of the agricultural sector. In July, the energy ministry announced that farmers in Żurrieq, Safi, Marsaxlokk, Żejtun, Għaxaq, and Gudja were poised to benefit from a €24.5 million project to extend the new water to south and southwestern parts of Malta. 

It is estimated that some 350 farmers, covering an additional 223 hectares of agricultural land, will benefit from this expansion.

READ MORE: Ta’ Barkat farmers left without water as problems with ‘new water’ facility persist