Opposition asks about proposed engineered landfill

The opposition's spokesman for public works and construction, Charles Buhagiar yesterday raised a series of questions about the proposed engineered landfill at Ghallis.

Addressing a news conference on site he said that Infrastructure Minister Ninu Zammit had failed to publish the studies which led to the choice of Ghallis for the development of the landfill, in spite of several requests.

As Ghallis was close to Bugibba and Qawra, he said, it made sense to keep the landfill as far as possible from this tourism zone.

The government, Mr Buhagiar said, had decided the landfill was to occupy an area of around 270 tumoli and for its preparation 3.5 million cubic metres of material at a height of four storeys had to be excavated.

He said that if the landfill would not take construction waste and other waste which could be recycled and turned into compost, then the fraction of the remaining waste would be relatively very small.

Even if it was to last 20 years, there was certainly no need of such a huge landfill, he said.

In view of all this, would it not make more sense to have a deeper and smaller landfill, he asked.

Mr Buhagiar said that for the landfill to be built at Ghallis, very good quality rock had to be cut from an undisturbed site.

Was the government to be paid for this material and had tests been carried out to ensure that good quality rock would not be buried?

Mr Buhagiar asked if the impact of the excavations and of the landfill itself on the tourism industry had been considered.

The Nationalist government, he said, had promised the EU that it would close Maghtab by May 2004.

But it had taken no initiatives aimed at reaching this aim until the election when, in a state of panic, it signed a contract with a Maltese/German consortium for construction waste to be deposited in quarries for the next five years. No one knew what would happen after that.

Mr Buhagiar said the government had decided that waste which could be composted and that which could be recycled were to be buried in an engineered landfill.

In a statement replying to Mr Buhagiar, the Ministry for Resources and Infrastructure pointed out that contrary to what Mr Buhagiar was claiming, the project description station and the preliminary report which led to the decision regarding Ghallis were public and accessible from the Malta Environment and Planning Authority's website.

The ministry said that the digging, building and maintenance of Ghallis was to be done in a number of phases with the aim of minimising the impact on tourism in the area in the most technical way possible.

It said that a controlled engineered landfill was built in a technical way and according to international standards which safeguarded the environment.