Report urges action against more building

The price of Maltese stone should be raised to deter more construction in an already overly built-up country, according to the author of one of the environment reports issued this week.

Adrian Mallia, co-author of the report 'State of the Environment Report for Malta 2002', published by the government last Tuesday, said the building industry needed a "big rethink".

"The price of stone is still too cheap if you take into consideration the problems we're facing with the environment - even though a revision in price would certainly not be a popular move," Mr Mallia said.

The report warns of over-quarrying in the island, a sector which it recommends should restructure itself if it is to be run on more environmentally sustainable lines.

"There is sadly a lack of compliance in the quarrying industry - from dust, noise, and over-excavation, down to the lack of real restoration," Mr Mallia said.

The report issued a stark warning on the disadvantages of quarrying.

"New quarries and extensions to existing quarries, a considerable number of which were undertaken illegally, affected significant areas of former agricultural land."

The problem was that a significant number of disused quarries were still not reclaimed and have instead been left as "gaping holes with no productive use".

Nevertheless, the loss of agricultural land cannot always be easily replaced with newly created fields.

In 2000, the PA had undertaken an orthophotographic 3D survey of quarry boundaries to establish the area and depth of quarrying at each licensed quarry site.

"This had shown that the vast majority of quarries were operating outside their quarry boundaries or have exceeded their permitted depths," the report said.

Mr Mallia said it was also high time to consider the importation of certain building materials, such as granite, for particular applications such as road construction and specialised concrete works.

The report also spells out clearly the urban planning problems in Malta. It says the rapid urban sprawl of the past decades has threatened, and in some cases obliterated, the former quaint and local feel of a number of villages, some of which coalesced with their neighbouring settlements.

Since a large number of people have moved out of the inner city cores, this has brought about other planning and environmental problems - the loss of significant areas of rural land to housing and other urban-type development.

Unfortunately, the report says, a number of negative trends are evident, such as the deterioration of air quality in the inner city areas, lack of recycling of materials, higher energy consumption, and lack of open spaces among others.

The report was very critical of the newer settlements.

"Decades of construction outside of any form of planning system have also resulted in an incoherent mass of buildings, often with villa-type suburbs overlooking all manner of incongruous development such as petrol stations, scrap yards, showrooms and the like."

The report said that unfortunately little was being done by way of improvement in urban planning and design. Though there has been sporadic research and talk on the issue, not much has been undertaken by way of reaching some form of decision on a new urban form for the islands.

Few attempts have also been made to rectify the mistakes of the past, the report concluded.

"Of particular note is the not uncommon tendency for the use of materials that actually compete with, rather than complement, the character of the urban fabric of these historic areas."

Mr Mallia said certain areas around the island needed complete replanning.

"For example, there are certain areas in, say, Hamrun and Sta Venera which could be rehabilitated and redeveloped in a more coherent and sustainable manner - perhaps providing smaller housing units," he said.

However, a headache is the multi-ownership of housing blocks which could make it very difficult to carry out such a strategy, Mr Mallia said.

The report makes ample reference to the pivotal role played by the Planning Authority - now the Malta Environment and Planning Authority - in curbing building abuse.

The number of infringements, removed by the owner after they were handed an enforcement order, increased from 141 in 1998 to 339 in 2001.

Furthermore, an average of nearly 1,300 stop/enforcement notices have been issued each year over the review period.

The problem of over-construction has also been made worse by the population density factor. With over 1,200 people per square kilometre, Malta is one of the most densely populated countries in the world.

Data on dwellings show an increase of three per cent, from 164,968 in 1998 to 169,610 in 2000

The report said that between 1994 and 2000, very few applications for hotels had been approved outside the development zone boundary.

However, due to the extensive area of land associated with such developments, they also contributed significantly to the loss of rural land.

The report said that hotel and hospital development in rural areas had resulted in the loss of 11 hectares of agricultural land between 1994 and 2000.

Further tourism development currently proposed in the form of golf courses would, if approved, result in further loss of agricultural land, the report warned.

Pending applications for golf course development in Malta would take up 180 hectares of agricultural land.