Controlled engineered landfill

I refer to the full-page advert carried in The Sunday Times last week (page 59). Following years of pressure from environmentalists and Alternattiva Demokratika and the country's acceptance of EU membership commitments, Government has recognised the need to address the waste issue.

It felt the need to change the names to be used in relation to the new landfills. Maghtab and l-Ghallis ta' Gewwa are essentially the same place. Tal-Maghlaq/Il-Qasam il-Kbir are the names of two quarries with no public resonance and camouflage the fact that they are located a few metres from a World Heritage Site known as Mnajdra.

What is a controlled landfill? Government told us what it is not. The fact that it will not be an uncontrolled dump and will not rise above the surrounding landscape does not describe what a controlled landfill should be.

A controlled landfill is a site where the residue of the residue of a waste reduction, waste reuse and waste recycling process is safely deposited. The essence lies in the maximum reduction of deposit of potentially useful resources and the careful separation and control of hazardous and toxic wastes from other waste streams.

Yet, Qrendi council, Friends of the Earth and Fondazzjoni Wirt Artna stated that "the interim landfills will be too near to the Mnajdra Temples".

It will be necessary to monitor and control such landfills long after their closure for gas emissions and leachate. In view of the absence of an effective waste separation system during the proposed interim all waste deposited there must be considered mixed and therefore hazardous.

Landscaping of the closed sited would be desirable but will be handicapped by the need to maintain gas recovery equipment on site for a considerable period. In order to prevent damage to a topliner required to cap such a landfill the planting of trees should be excluded permanently.

Such damage would introduce rainwater to the landfill and increase the burden of dealing with leachate which will be a permanent issue. Government's reassurances on landscaping do not address the issue of the alternative uses of the site which could be contained and add considerable amenity value to a heritage park for Mnajdra, Hagar Qim, the neolithic Misqa cisterns/silos, It-Torri tal-Hamrija and the Congreve Memorial and paleo-Christian tombs all in its immediate vicinity as is the spectacular coastline at Il-Maghlaq.

Qrendi local council said that the sites in Qrendi are close to areas where potable water is drawn "and this could present a threat to the local community".

While giving due weight to government's efforts to avoid taking what would amount to criminal risks to groundwater resources, the claim of absolute and permanent elimination of such concerns is not easily acceptable. In fact the commitment of Maghtab as an uncontrolled dump for several decades advocates its reuse as a controlled landfill in order to avoid any risks to any fresh site. Nothing is risk-free.

The quarries (near Mnajdra) cannot function as engineered landfills as there is no waste separation yet.

How will unseparated waste not contain hazardous waste? Having failed to inform and educate the public for decades the Ministry of Resources and Infrastructure and WasteServ Ltd now spend public money to sedate the public.

It is impossible to assert that unseparated municipal or industrial waste is not hazardous. Not only does such waste contain a mixture of hazardous subtances known to the persons disposing of them but their mixture can reasonably be expected to produce new compounds unknown to all persons no matter how high in authority they may be. All such unseparated waste should be considered hazardous.

The dumping of such material cannot be described as controlled, no matter how well engineered the quarry may be or beautiful the later landscaping. The subsequent long-term cost in taking all necessary precautions in monitoring such a dump will be prohibitive. The waste strategy is not cast in stone but should not be casually ignored either. Since its framing with all stakeholder input, little or no consultation has taken place. A radical change such as the creation of interim landfill sites cannot be shrugged off without offence to concerned civil society.

The constraints affecting the Maghtab site have not been discussed and a flat statement that nothing can be done to maintain the flow of unseparated waste to Maghtab until the first cell of the engineered landfill becomes available is not acceptable. It is absurd that the welcome commitment to compliance to EU directives is used to excuse the creation of new landfills.

"Smaller landfills around the island would be more of a good idea than a single large one", the Malta Hotels and Restaurants Association said in a statement.

Many landfills are not a good idea, nor are temporary or interim landfills that will inevitably be of a permanent nature and will also require separate monitoring for the foreseeable future. The additional cost that would be incurred in adapting the Mnajdra quarries including top, bottom and side lining, leachate control and gas recovery as well as the estimated 40 year monitoring of the site after closure, show clearly that a multiplication of landfills is uneconomic. Mnajdra itself would be a additional economic burden that would make public acceptance of eco-taxes based on the polluter pays principle unnecessarily difficult.

Why Ghallis ta' Gewwa?

The principal argument in favour of this site is that it is already committed to such use and has already suffered much worse degradation because of the uncontrolled landfill than it can possibly suffer through the siting of a properly engineered landfill taking the residue of a waste separation process.

The government has kept the cards close to its chest since 2001. One assumes that the interests of the tourism industry have been carefully considered in maintaining the landfill at Maghtab. Aesthetic considerations are significant in this regard but should not be overemphasised or lead to the commitment of other areas in an interim period.

"Government is to generate millions of cubic metres of inert waste," according to MHRA.

The use of all mineral resources available on the chosen site prior to its commitment to landfilling is supported. Only the government knows what the tradeoff is between resource recovery and waste generation from this process. Only the government knows to what extent this commitment has been made for aesthetic or public relations reasons.

Malta has demanded a controlled landfill for many decades. Elimination of building and construction waste from the landfill reduces its growth by 80 per cent by weight. Reduction, reuse and recycling can reduce the landfilled fraction drastically. At the heart of any such system lies a waste separation system at source which can only be successful with the co-operation of a fully informed and well-educated public sharing a common concern. Resources to achieve such a public awareness have been very restricted.

Dr Vassallo is chairman of Alternativa Demokratika - the Green Party.

www.alternattiva.org.mt