Malta's New Water Programme — Treated-Effluent Irrigation for Farmers (Ta' Barkat & Sant'Antnin)

Malta's Water Services Corporation (WSC) treats around 60,000 m³ of sewage a day — about 80% of the country's wastewater — at the Ta' Barkat plant in Xgħajra, fed by the pre-treatment works at Sant'Antnin. Since a New Water polishing facility was inaugurated at Ta' Barkat in 2018, ultrafiltration and reverse osmosis have been used to upgrade this effluent to a quality safe for crop irrigation.
New Water production reached 1.5–1.6 million m³ a year in 2023–2024, delivered through a 70 km distribution network to roughly 2,000 hectares of registered agricultural land, including 800 hectares on Gozo. Because agriculture accounts for about 76% of Malta's groundwater use, the programme is explicitly framed as working toward a 'net zero impact' on the island's natural water cycle by substituting reclaimed effluent for aquifer abstraction.
A €24.5 million expansion completed in southern Malta in 2023, co-financed by the EU under the EAFRD rural-development programme, added 6,000 m³/day of New Water capacity via two new ultrafiltration/reverse-osmosis units and 12 km of new trenching, extending the network to roughly 350 additional farmers and 223 hectares in towns including Żurrieq, Marsaxlokk and Żejtun. WSC's stated targets are more than 20,000 m³/day of production by 2028 and, at full build-out, 7 million m³ a year — enough to cover roughly 35% of Malta's total agricultural water demand.

Read the full analysis: https://www.wsc.com.mt/information/new-water/