Mark Zerafa
The aqueduct running through Attard, Mrieħel and Santa Venera has a tale to tell. The iconic arches, together with a few water towers and fountains, are what remain of a feat of 17th-century engineering – a poignant reminder of an island nation’s struggle to manage a dearth of one essential resource: water.
Valletta, the newly founded city, may have been the jewel in the crown of the Order’s presence in Malta, thriving and elegant; but without a reliable supply of life-giving water, how could the city built by gentlemen for gentlemen continue to flourish when the cisterns ran dry?
Tomasucci, an engineer and Jesuit priest, was commissioned to draw up a plan to divert water from the hills of Rabat to Valletta. The aqueduct thus came to be, with Grand Master Alof de Wignacourt digging deep into his own pockets to turn an architectural design by Bontadini into reality.
Water scarcity seems to be a problem of yesteryear. It is 2026 after all and obtaining all the water that we need is as easy as lifting the lever of a bathroom tap. If only Grand Master Wignacourt could see us now!
Yet, such perceptions are as deceptive as they are dangerous, as precipitation in Malta has declined by 17% over the long-term average in recent years. Overextraction of water and dwindling rainfall have both contributed to a critical depletion of our groundwater reserves.
As climate change engulfs the Mediterranean region and Malta approaches more tropical conditions, our reliance on reverse osmosis – an energy intensive process – increases. Effective water conservation, therefore, does not only bolster our resilience in times of extended drought; it brings us closer to our goal of energy efficiency, lowering our emission of heat trapping gases and reducing our impact on the climate.
And, yet, as our groundwater reaches critically low levels, water bottling companies are given a free pass. It really is a double whammy when they are allowed to extract this precious resource, that really belongs to us all, at no charge to package into non-biodegradable plastic containers that are choking our seas and our countryside – only to sell it back to us.
Between 2014 and 2021 alone, the construction industry extracted 403 million litres of groundwater, at no cost whatsoever. Clearly, this is misuse of a finite and precious resource. This practice is not sustainable and attempts to rectify this over the years were insufficient or merely fell through. The ‘Green Paper on the Regulation of Groundwater Abstraction in the Maltese Islands’ (2023) sought to rectify unbridled overextraction, proposing tariffs for commercial users but seems to have been abandoned to gather dust in the meantime.
Grand Master Jean de la Valette displayed foresight and wisdom when he decreed a commission to propose strategies for water conservation in the new city. Henceforth, development on Mount Sceberras was to be equipped with cisterns to collect rainwater, and non-compliance was subject to a fine of 50 scudi – a small fortune for low earners, those days.
An iteration of this decree still exists in the laws of Malta but enforcement has been lax, unsatisfactory or non-existent. A potential asset, rainwater, that may have been collected to alleviate our water shortage problem is, instead, turned into a liability as it is often channelled into the sewer system, overwhelming it, leading to havoc after a real downpour.
Grand Master la Valette must be turning in his grave.
As climate change unfolds and the Mediterranean becomes increasingly arid, we are not mere observers. The final chapter of our struggle for resilience is still to be written; yet, we are the authors of that chapter and choices we make today will carve how we will live tomorrow.
Let us take a leaf from Wignacourt’s book and la Valette’s. Let us give historians of the future reasons to celebrate our wisdom and foresight and not to lament our self-destructive folly
Mark Zerafa is the international secretary and a candidate for ADPD-The Green Party.
First published in The Times of Malta – 02/02/2026
