Hole in view

We have brought overlapping down to an unrefined art. Such are the pressures of living in a small island country while pretending that we can well afford the expansionist conduct of even a slightly bigger country.

A landfill in the lap of a world heritage site. A road rubbing nature up the wrong way, where two local councils meet yet fail to converge. Here follow two examples of what happens when our carefully crafted boundaries turn grey.

Necessary evil

Something had to crack. Malta's 2004 EU target for landfill compliance has proven too ambitious after years of languishing. Successive governments have floundered directionless in the face of the burgeoning bonfire. Crack it did and the casualty is an important piece of coastline linked to our oldest example of heritage, the prehistoric temples.

The decision to relocate southward while a membrane-lined quarry is sculpted at Ghallis is a lesser evil compared to bulldozing Maghtab into the sea.

We have suffered the humiliation of a smouldering garbage mountain on Malta's most travelled scenic route to the northern hotel resorts. Perhaps we are not in a very good mood despite the closing on schedule of Maghtab to construction waste last month.

That we have become so enraged at earlier acts of vandalism committed at Hagar Qim and Mnajdra over the years has not been a bad thing at all. Last year's atrocity was vented on the temples in an apparent blackmailing by some hunters who defaced national pride when their own narrow designs were curbed.

Now the country's worst disgrace is to be farmed out to a villeggatura for a couple of years in the backyard of the islands' most important cultural and touristic resource, Mnajdra.

Parking Maghtab on the shoulder of Mnajdra seems akin to keeping a leaky garbage bag in the salott or front room until the recommended time and day for its correct disposal arrives. The finest room in the nation's house, where you would normally welcome and charm your guests, is to become a repulsive and shameful hole unworthy of an insect.

Yet landfills are just another human by-product. MEPA makes a green point out of entreating us to cut down on waste by not buying things we don't really need. We all want to live as far away as possible from the decomposing remains of our consumer lifestyle. Yesterday's revelry is today's stinking heap.

A green friend of mine owned up to a lost dream of seeing the Mnajdra quarry turned into a Taormina-style theatre by the sea with Filfla as a backdrop. Most people I have spoken to voiced the opinion that a massive educational and enforcement exercise to reduce and recycle waste could still save Mnajdra.

The MLP observes that not even government departments are separating their waste, adding that no immediate and urgent projects for recycling have been announced. Introduction of tough fiscal disincentives on those producing construction waste and encouragement for recyclers is urged by the Green Party.

As things stand, our concerns will certainly revolve around how to stop smoke and offensive smells blowing over the ridge to fumigate unsuspecting temple goers. (Mnajdra is downwind of the quarry site 310 days of the year.) How can we ensure that maximum recycling of waste is achieved with minimum waste going to land-fill. How can we avoid putting a system in place whereby contractors are rewarded in proportion to the volume or weight of waste they bring into the site.

Medical waste

Getting the details right is essential to high standards. The Malta Institute of Waste Management, an NGO of sorts, has called for a serious approach to the waste monitoring and auditing process at St Luke's Hospital.

Shredded, micro-waved hospital waste (remember the scandal over amputated limbs at Maghtab?) will end up at Mnajdra and eventually Ghallis. If everything is up to scratch the end result after micro-wave radiation of clinical waste will be "safer than domestic waste". If it is not done properly we could find that infectious waste is still entering the municipal waste stream destined for landfill.

Much effort also needs to be put into controlling leachate which could end up in the sea from which we get our drinking water. The Ghar Lapsi reverse osmosis plant is a short swim from Mnajdra.

Perhaps at some future date Richard England will be commissioned to whip up another statue for the entrance to the rehabilitated Mnajdra quarry, filled to the brim with our rubbish. The award-winning sculptor could create something meaningful out of the word LIVE which could be effectively reflected in a handy pool of leachate spelling EVIL.

Pink and white in Pembroke

On an island of intense land use pressures it seems crucial to cherish the few natural strips of green. Open land views are getting hard to come by. Visual barriers may be useful for screening greenhouses in the countryside, as recommended by MEPA. However a line of shrubs can sometimes break up the feeling of space we so crave.

Landscaping is considered by the Planning Authority to be a form of development requiring a permit. How sensitive are our landscape gardeners to planting within both urban and rural contexts?

The road which runs alongside Wied Harq Hamiem, behind the Villa Rosa, is the next candidate for landscaping. The edge of the scientifically and ecologically important valley doubles as a roadside verge on the urban fringe of the border between St Julian's and Pembroke. Anyone walking along the pavement right on the valley's edge experiences a brief interlude between traffic lights and five star blockdom.

As nature would have it the valley lip is tinted with delicate wild flowers in spring and golden grasses throughout the summer. Enter the landscapers and a prim row of oleanders is about to be installed, fragmenting the valley view and imposing a monotonous uniformity of vegetation.

No amount of spacing the shrubs will reduce the impact on the view. The sense of an uncluttered valley edge will be lost. Minister Pullicino himself is known to have insisted at a "public consultation" meeting (held by the landscapers at a nearby hotel by private invitation only) that the view must be preserved.

According to MEPA guidelines, oleander is not a suitable plant for roadsides in a rural setting. Valleys are unmistakably part of the countryside even if they extend their arms through our mushrooming towns.

It is quite true, as anyone can read in the MEPA guidelines, that you would have to ingest an entire bush to die of oleander poisoning. The landscapers play down the toxic bit. A child accidentally chewing on a leaf would merely be violently sick. Plant architecture inspires disturbing logic such as the morsel offered me down the phone last week: "Because the road is long and straight we had to go vertical".

I can well understand that olives, being native trees, could happily act as a barrier between the road and homes on the Pembroke side. They would help blot up carbon dioxide and traffic noise.

The oleander bushes on the valley side will, it has been promised, be kept trimmed down to a height of one metre. But in Malta, where fountains dry up and wooden street furniture rarely sees a coat of varnish, an oleander hedge is bound to swell beyond the prescribed proportions as soon as the local council runs out of money to keep it regularly pruned. Even if spaced out at a prescribed distance along the verge the bushes would only serve to create holes in the view.

The Pembroke council finds no objection "providing MEPA approves the permit." What MEPA will make of this borderline case remains to be seen.

The initiative of the Mellieha council to plant pink-flowering Widnet il- Bahar on the bypass centre strip is a gentle reminder of how the context and character of our strips of countryside can be in some small way respected. It does not take much.