I refer to Christopher Ciantar's article (September 8) when he asked various local councils whether they would accept having bulk refuse separation sites in their locality. I am certain he was not surprised that they were all against his idea. No one wants even one's own rubbish in one's locality let alone anyone else's.
We residents of Maghtab are no different!
What Mr Ciantar should be promoting is having every local council find enough space to deal with their own waste in their own locality. Rather than have five sites with areas of approximately 5,000 square metres, have 16 sites with an area of just 2,000 square metres.
These waste facilities should not only include bulk refuse but should also include municipal waste to be sorted and sent to an incinerator. Every local council will then pay a pro rata fee per ton incinerated. The bulk refuse should be sorted and sent to recycling plants.
What is happening at the moment at Maghtab is totally senseless and extremely expensive and does not do any favours to the present financial situation. For those who are unaware, there is presently a contractor quarrying some 50sqm landfills and some larger in Maghtab at a huge expense and with an extremely high risk of contaminating the water table.
Although these quarries are lined with a membrane there is still a very high possibility of leachate that causes ground water contamination besides creating another mountain of rubbish by piling all Malta's and Gozo's municipal waste in these quarries. Coincidentally, the rock being dug out is of an extremely high quality that previously served as a protection to the water table. Removing this hard rock allows the leachate to penetrate and reach the water table more easily. Previously there was a run off from the Maghtab mountain into the sea, hence the contaminated sea along the coast road.
Therefore, are these quarries being dug to mine out the high quality hard rock and using the membrane lining as the excuse? Another land rise is being created anyway!
The way that land filling is being carried out in Malta is a thing of the past. In much larger countries they have long stopped this system as they were running out of land. Why, in such a small country like ours, do we opt for a system that needs vast areas of land?
A landfill should be used solely for burying the remaining ash from an incinerator and not for untreated waste, including animal intestines, as is presently happening.
While all this land filling is going on, you read about the controversy regarding the need or not for another golf course and where to situate it and where not to. Where better than Maghtab could a golf course be situated? It lies exactly between St Julians and Bugibba, the largest tourist areas in Malta, it is wasted prime sea view land, it is an eyesore, it stinks, it contains a poorer quality of soil that is already contaminated, therefore the produce from this area could also be contaminated, it is low lying and close to the sea therefore desalination for watering the golf course would be relatively simple and there aren't hundreds of farmers to evict so alternative sites could easily be allocated to them in replacement of their land in Maghtab.
A golf course will also attract a higher spending tourist that is presently badly needed.
In any case, golf course or no golf course, the promise was that Maghtab would be closed on April 30, 2004. Now, nearly six months later, Maghtab is still very much open, it is still growing over a larger area, it still catches fire, it still stinks, it is still an eyesore, it is still contaminated, it is still a monument to all the promises.