Zejtun council tries to block EU funds

Zejtun local council has turned to EU institutions in its quest to halt the planned upgrade of the waste recycling plant in Marsascala.

The council has asked the EU to withhold the €17 million (Lm7.3 million) in cohesion funds intended to upgrade the Sant'Antnin plant.

In a letter to Environment Commissioner Stravos Dimas - and to all the members and substitutes of the environment committee in the European Parliament, except for Nationalist MEP David Casa - the council requested that EU institutions look into the matter and take all "the necessary action so that EU funds will not be utilised to cause health and environmental hazards to European citizens".

The council attached a picture of the plant taken to "show the proximity of the existing plant to the residential area of Zejtun".

Mr Casa confirmed he had not received the letter and expressed surprise that "the Zejtun council seemed to exclude the only Maltese MEP sitting on the committee" while informing all his other "foreign" colleagues. He said he found this attitude "rather strange".

The letter was sent by the council's executive secretary Reuben Seychell on behalf of mayor Joe Attard and the local council members. Mr Seychell wrote that the council wanted to bring to the EU's attention "the massive health and environmental problems which the proposed composting plant and waste recycling facility at Sant' Antnin, Malta, financed from EU funds, will create".

The council says the new plant will process all the recyclable waste of Malta and Gozo and that the original application submitted by Wasteserv misguided the public because it only stated there would be "improvement works at Sant' Antnin waste treatment plant", when, according to the council, "works include the demolition and total removal of the existing plant and the construction of a multi-facility plant taking up more than 10 times the capacity of the previous plant".

The Zejtun local council complained it was never consulted during the preparatory stage of the proposal nor during the environmental impact assessment.

It told MEPs that the company responsible for the environment impact assessment, AIS Ltd has "misguidedly concluded that the area in question is an industrial area simply because close by there is a hard stone quarry".

Sources close to the Commission and the European Parliament told The Times there had as yet been no official response to the complaints raised by the council on the issue.