The Green whistleblower

With great melancholy and quiet predictability, the heralding of spring last month did not allay the impetus of environmental infringements, as the gamut of issues mentioned in this restricted space testifies.

The wooden spoon this month must surely go to the developers of the newest village/town in the Maltese Islands which, as yet, has not been christened. I am referring to the mushrooming hamlet at Xemxija, on Bajda Ridge just before Mizieb.

Due to the authorities` indulgence and complacency, we already have development at Xemxija Heights, Mistra, Pwales Valley and Wardija Hilltop Village in the area - we are now witnessing this new development which blemishes the trip along the panoramic road to Mellieha.

In fact, every tenet of landscaping and cherishing of our natural and historical heritage have been thrown to the scrap heap in this new construction, which extends vertically to an abnormal extent, such that it is visible even from Selmun.

Paul C. Borg had already denounced the desecration of Mistra in this newspaper some time ago. It seems that the highly relevant arguments of the development being only a few hundred metres away from the Mizieb afforestation site, right in the middle of valuable garigue and above dense maquis and just a small distance away from the ancient Roman road and restored apiaries, fizzle away in front of touristic and general economic considerations.

Judging from the myriad sleek crane arms dominating the skyline at this new sin, the developers are in a rush to legitimise their claim on the property before the ascent of the summer heat. Will the authorities stay put and wait for St Paul`s Bay 2 to be completed before applying the brakes on the rampant development?

The garigue in Pembroke and the surrounding coastal area have again been branded for unwelcome development; after that the garigue in the area, ironically scheduled under Level 1 and Level 2 Categories, had been earmarked for a possible golf course.

This time, developers turned their sites on the sea and MEPA issued the Terms of Reference for a sailing club in the area. Rather than using a site endowed with existing slipways (such as Qawra) or that is already compromised due to pollution (such as Bahar ic-Caghaq), we choose to exploit a pristine site, where cuts in the Level 2 Category scheduled rocky coast must be made.

The release of antifouling paints generated by boats should also raise some eyebrows.

It seems that even nature reserves or remote places such as Comino cannot escape unscathed from the footprint of man in this wild west of ours. Last month, Nature Trust, after it had already made incessant appeals about the area in the early 1990s (then as SSCN), highlighted the plight of Comino whereby irreparable damage was being wrought to the garigue in the area through the illegal planting of Eucalyptus trees.

Other chimeras include the release of untreated effluent from the pig farm into the sea and the dilapidated state of the environs of the Enemalta substation following recent works and the pig farm itself.

Nature Trust is seeking to make people aware, usually more conscious of the state of urban and domestic environs, of the challenges facing the integrity of remote places like Comino by promoting ecowalks around the island.

I may be risking being accused that I am making whipping boys out of local councils, but the contractor chosen by the Mellieha council to give a pruning to the Tamarisk trees lining the coast at Ghadira made a garble out of the whole thing.

Rather than the prescribed pruning, the contractor chosen to completely defoliate the trees and reducing the trees to mere stumps, which takes quite a long time to regenerate. The good news is that the Ministry of Agriculture decided to rap the knuckles of the contractor in question for the incident.

Follow-ups from last month

After the dust kicked up by NT, Ivan Fenech from MEPA replied to us regarding our concerns over garigue destruction for agricultural purposes at Wied Babu in Zurrieq, in the vein that MEPA were monitoring the situation.

After all this drudgery, let`s resort to some silver lining. After the whistle had been blown by NT, the dump (largely of agricultural origin) under the ancient oak woodland at Wardija was finally cleared up.

Let`s only hope that systematic monitoring of the site is taken as a prerogative, to avoid the déjà vu of having to report things and cleaning up the mess later.

The valley of Wied Ghomor in Swieqi appears to be finally emerging from the doldrums after persistent campaigning by Nature Trust when the Ministry for Resources and Infrastructure and the St Julian`s Scouts teamed up together to embark on a clean-up of the valley bed.

God only knows how Wied Ghomor would have ended had not the valley been scheduled - the maisonettes visible from Regional Road and which encroach too much on the sloping ground of the valley were already too much of an eyesore.

Just to redress the balance, the Mellieha local council is working with Nature Trust, MEPA and with another NGO to preserve the best preserved remnants of a sand dune on the island of Malta - that at White Tower Bay.

Due to its precarious proximity to boathouses, and illegal camping and offroading activities in the area, NT embarked on a project to save the dune through a restoration project.

One last thing. Apart from the political rhetoric, let`s hope that funds prescribed for farmers in the Rural Development Plan being formulated (something to the tune of Lm8 million) be awarded especially to those having a sterling environmental record - i.e. who do not practise land reclamation and garigue destruction, who use organic farming methods and respect natural habitats in general.

Other issues also being currently addressed by Nature Trust (Malta) include:

¤ illegal offroading and dumping, at Wied il-Kbir in Qormi, part of the largest valley system in the Maltese Islands;

¤ developments at Bahrija (especially the makeshift landfill behind the church); and

¤ environmental infringements, especially illegal buildings and constructions in the south-eastern part of Gozo, such as Qala, Ta` Isopu and San Blas.