Boreholes and a prayer for rain

Abstract

Bar its last few days, last month would have been the most parched November ever, with three weeks of continuous sunny days. With slightly more than half of our drinking water coming from energy-hungry reverse osmosis plants and our aquifer being over-extracted and salinised and contaminated with fertiliser effluents, we have little to be buoyant about and should be pulling up our socks. Even more sobering was an article in MaltaToday of October 29 which said that 350,000 m3 of water are estimated to be illegally extracted every year and that the total annual extraction amount of 650,000 m3 is precariously close to the 750,000 m3 aquifer recharge figure. The article says it should be easy for the authorities to track down the thousands of illegal boreholes which pepper our islands, since contrary to wind-propelled ones, these necessitate some form of electrical supply to power pumps, etc. The indiscriminate filling of bowsers from the aquifer to then sell to individuals or even hotels to fill up swimming pools, etc., occurs in broad daylight in summer but seems not to raise an eyebrow with the authorities.