Legal abrogation of underground cisterns to cause more wastage and damage – MP

A change in the code of police laws has removed the legal prohibition to discharge water collected on rooftops into the main drainage systems, Labour MP Roderick Galdes said.

The MP said the legal amendment would lead to more construction developments that are built with the need for a rooftop cistern, allowing rainwater to enter the drainage system directly and causing greater stress on the collection system.

The Code of Police Laws stipulated that rooftops had to be connected to underground cisterns so that water run-off does not enter the central main sewers.

The law was however never strictly enforced by the health authorities.

"We have enough problems as it is with overflowing sewers in various towns during strong rains. The law as it has been changed does nothing to regulate water collection in urban and residential zones," Galdes said.

"This change in the law will cause more problems and infrastructural damage, and it contrasts with the government's preaching over planning and environmental conservation."

Since more than 30% of Malta's surface area is built up, with most of this development happening in the last 30-40 years, flooding has become more frequent and this comes at a considerable cost: insurance claims arising from the September 2003 storm in Malta exceeded €10 million.

One possible solution would be to construct storm water reservoirs to collect and re-use the runoff. But space in urban areas for reservoirs is limited, competing for space with basements, garages and car parks and other modern amenities.

Economic and financial studies carried out in preparation of Malta's Storm Water Master Plan in 2006 concluded that the "the possibility of creating large reservoirs was considered unfeasible" and close to impossible for cisterns to be built beneath existing buildings.

In itself, the absence of cisterns from most of today's buildings built over the past half a century has aggravated matters. A legal requirement since the times of the Knights of Order of St John, the requirement to store rainwater in a cistern was largely unenforced for the past half a century. This requirement is mandatory for the certification of the energy performance of new buildings through a legal notice which only came in to force in 2009 and which was not still not fully enforced a year later.