Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1546095
8 gozotoday | FRIDAY • 7 AUGUST 2026 CULTURE Bathing water quality in Malta and Gozo for the first 10 weeks of the offcial bathing season WE are in the midst of a very hot summer and swimming is no longer a pastime but often a sur- vival option. Malta is well known for clean bathing waters as evi- denced from EU reports issued annually. In fact for the first 10 weeks of the current bathing sea- son only 3-4% of all bathing areas have been officially classified as being less than in Excellent con- dition according the EU Bathing Water Directive and the Barcelo- na Convention. Therefore, apart from three sites which have been closed for bath- ing for a few days, the rest compile with the official safety health lim- its. But it is still possible to compare the levels of bacterial contamina- tion (Eschericia coli) in all sites. The purpose of the following con- tribution is to identify the best and possibly the lesser good localities for bathing in Malta. This analysis has been based on the archived data of the Environment Protec- tion Directorate. Such data con- sists of levels of two types of bac- terial parameters: Escherichia coli and Intestinal enterococci which may be considered as the bacte- riological parameters to use to check whether a bathing locality is fit for bathing. These parameters are usually indicative of pollution by sewage. Again for the purpose of this contribution, only data on levels of E.coli have been used. The accompanying picture pro- vides a comparison of Malta's Official Bathing Sites, based on estimate 95 percentile values of E.coli. Levels are shown in dif- ferent colours, so that the BLUE ones are sites with a consistently excellent bathing quality, the RED ones are sites with the worst qual- ity as compared to the other sites, while the GREEN and YELLOW are sites which show intermediate quality. Sites marked with a star are those where closure to bathing was reported due to some tempo- rary pollution event. This picture provides a number of interesting observations. Balluta and St. George's Bay (St. Julian's) were the most polluted compared to the other sites. This has been consistent for at least the last 3-5 years. Tax-Xema, Tal-Ghazzenin and Sirens also have higher levels of pollution that the rest of the sites. All these 5 sites are located in heavily ur- banized coastlines. The bathing sites at Exiles and Pretty Bay Birzebbugia, had a few days of site closures due to short term pollution events, though evidently, this did not effect the overall quality of their bathing waters except during such short- term events. As regards the three bathing sites at Comino, (which are so popular with locals and tourists), all had excellent bathing water quality though for the current year, San Niklaw had marginally less clean waters than the other two sites. The Blue Lagoon had one of the best bathing waters in spite of the very high bather den- sities reported there. This sug- gests that factors other than den- sity of bathers may be responsible for poor bathing water quality. In fact, this has been highlighted in a recent scientific paper present- ed at an international conference. More on this, in a future contri- bution.