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Malta: €560,000 Coca-Cola Donation is ‘PR Exercise Covering Water Misuse’
By Matthew Vella
Malta Today
September 16, 2011
A cool half-million from Coca-Cola: first on the left is Brian Mizzi, GSD managing director, with Gozo minister Giovanna Debono (third from left) and resources minister George Pullicino (third from right).
General Soft Drinks donates €560,000 to Eco-Gozo for water project while extracting 50,000 cubic metres of water for free from its borehole.
Alternattiva Demokratika has raised questions over a €560,000 donation to government for a water project in Gozo by the General Soft Drinks company the representatives of Coca-Cola in Malta on behalf of the Coca-Cola Foundation.
The funds are to be used on water project for the eco-Gozo project for the catchment and reuse of around 4-5 million litres of rainwater each year.
But the Green Party is saying that Coca-Cola’s representatives should have closed down the Qormi boreholes they use to extract water for their Marsa operations.
General Soft Drinks, bottler for Coca-Cola and producer of Kristal table water, extracts the equivalent of 26 million bottles of table water every year from the endangered water table, without being charged for this water because it has access to boreholes.
Carmel Cacopardo, AD spokesman on sustainable development, said GSD’s help would have been more effective in the national effort to protect the water table, as less water would be extracted.
AD chairman Michael Briguglio went a step further, saying the acceptance by government of donations from an interested party, on the eve of a decision on the control of extraction of water from the water table through the use of boreholes, conveys a very wrong message.
“The government would have been more credible if it had postponed acceptance of the donation until such time as it had formulated and published a clear policy on the use of boreholes to extract water from the water table.
“At present General Soft Drinks and other companies extract water from the public aquifer to use it to produce mineral water and soft drinks. If this unsustainable practice is redressed, AD would not query the involvement of Coca Cola in a water project in Gozo. But as long as this unsustainable practice persists, the donation sounds more like a public relations exercise to cover up this misuse of water resources,” Briguglio said.
AD also said that three government officials namely, Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi, MEPA chairman Austin Walker and Malta Resources Authority chairman Reuben Balzan have held or still hold high ranking positions within Mizzi Group, the parent company of General Soft Drinks.
Malta’s water table is already burdened by over-extraction from private boreholes, and risks becoming “unusable” by 2025 because of the increase of salinity in groundwater from borehole drilling.
General Soft Drinks, which admits to getting half its mix to produce table water from its three registered boreholes, was awarded the 2009 Environment Award for Industry by the university-based Cleaner Technology Centre.
Malta is already extracting 11 million cubic metres more than the sustainable rate of 23 million cubic metres, based on current rainfall patterns.
General Soft drinks has previously insisted it extracts “less than 0.15% of the 34 million cubic metres of groundwater extracted annually in Malta” from its three registered boreholes which would amount to an annual 51,000 cubic metres (51 million litres).
GSD has also said it has reduced groundwater extraction by 66% in the past three years, as well as its overall water consumption.
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