Mizzi claims 'deceit' over Qrendi landfills

While the Malta Environment and Planning Authority was calling the Mnajdra landfills "a quarry restoration exercise", the Resources and Infrastructure Minister was deceiving the people by saying the project would be according to international standards for engineered landfills, the Labour Party's spokesman for infrastructural services, Joe Mizzi said.

Quarry restoration, he said in a statement, required a totally different approach to landfilling.

In democratic countries, he added, such deceit by a minister usually led to his resignation.

Mr Mizzi claimed the proposed landfills at Qrendi were in fact not going to be engineered. This had been confirmed by MEPA, which had asked for the public's comments on an environmental impact statement called "Restoration of quarries by infilling with inert and non-hazardous wastes at Qrendi".

Mr Mizzi said the authority's description of the project - as the restoration of quarries - was in contrast with the ministry's description of it as an engineered landfill subject to the EU landfills directive.

According to the directive, the restoration of quarries with construction and non-hazardous waste was not a landfilling activity.

Restoration did not include the placement of liners to protect the aquifer and to control gas seepage as stipulated by the EU landfills directive.

Mr Mizzi said a ministry advert in newspapers confirmed that the government had no intention of introducing waste separation at source.

This was because the ministry was pointing out that an engineered landfill could take unseparated waste. This declaration, he said, was in breach of the EU landfills directive.

The ministry had made no arrangements whatsoever to separate dangerous from domestic waste. This meant that the domestic waste which would be dumped at Mnajdra would include hazardous waste.

The ministry had said the quarries proposed to be turned into rubbish dumps at Mnajdra were outside the underwater protection zone, Mr Mizzi said. This was in contrast with the EU directive on underground water which stipulated that all water should be protected.

The ministry was also saying that all sides of the landfill would be covered by membrane. However, the minister also told parliament that the quarries' topography would not be changed with rock cutting. But it was an accepted fact in engineered landfilling that straight walls led to breakage in linings.

This confirmed what the MLP was saying, that the proposed Mnajdra project would not stop pollution from entering the water table. This was in breach of EU regulations.