Priorities in waste management

In his article Practical Politics (March 10), the Minister for the Environment avoids serious discussion on a number of issues including plastic wastes, the fate of Maghtab landfill and the environmental risks associated with contaminated compost. The Labour Party is not against technological improvements at Sant'Antnin composting plant. Indeed, the Labour administration had, in the past, radically improved this plant because our top priority was to lessen environmental impacts.

In contrast, the Nationalist administration is pursuing the wrong priorities when it placed logistical matters above environmental concerns by proposing a "hefty investment" that will increase the capacity of the Sant'Antnin plant. This will heighten environmental impacts at the local and national level.

Minister George Pullicino still cannot understand the danger of centralising composting activity to a single composting plant that receives organic waste from many localities. Some of these sources may deliver contaminated waste and consequently contaminate all the compost produce, in other words result in an environmental catastrophe.

Labour has proposed in its environmental policy document Ambjent b'sahhtu ghal sahhitna (A healthy environment for our health) a policy favouring the regionalisation of waste management, including composting activities. The long-term benefit of this approach includes diminishing the risk of widespread contamination. This approach is also in line with emerging EU policy. Indeed, Germany is already changing its policies on composting.

Mr Pullicino also fails to respond to my criticism on the government's lack of policy on plastic wastes. Instead, the minister asks me a rhetorical question: Is Labour against minimising millions of plastic bags disposed in the environment? Of course we are in favour but we want plastic wastes reduction within a framework of environmental priorities based on rational policies for plastic wastes.

Presently, Mr Pullicino's only priority is netting the greatest number of taxpayers with his eco tax on plastic bags rather than target the eco tax on the most environmentally harmful plastics (A case of Mr Pullicino's "practical politics"?). The eco tax has been imposed on polyethylene (that is, plastic bags used in every home) but has not affected the less commonly used PVC plastic even though this emits large quantities of dioxin (a very hazardous substance) on combustion!

It is also unfair that the PN administration aims to reduce plastic wastes by taxes when it could have equally achieved its aim had it negotiated with the EU for the retention of the ban on the importation of plastic bottles (impractical politics!).

The PN now holds a growing catalogue of mistaken decisions in waste management based on wrong priorities and sheer incompetence. This has veered the country into the absurd, as in the case of the proposed landfills at Mnajdra, and further away from the Solid Waste Management Strategy of 2001. Unlike Mr Pullicino, the strategy considers the construction of a hazardous waste landfill and regional composting plants as priorities.

Meanwhile, Mr Pullicino lacks the courage to acknowledge that developments of the past few years at Maghtab landfill were the result of Labour's prodding, namely to end the mixing of waste streams at landfills and to retain Maghtab landfill temporarily operative. The latter advice was given by (Labour leader) Alfred Sant and has effectively been implemented by the government when it allowed Maghtab landfill to continue to temporarily operate in the area of ta' Zwejra. Although Mr Pullicino would not admit it, this site is considered by Mepa to be an extension of Maghtab. Indeed, the government failed to make an application for a new landfill at ta' Zwejra in accordance with the Landfills Directive 1999/31/EC.

Wasteserv has issued the Scott Wilson report on landfills, after years of procrastination and manoeuvering by the government. It is clear from this report and the ensuing tender document that the government intends to pursue the wrong priorities in waste management once again.

The Scott Wilson report abounds in contradictions, mistaken priorities and unanswered questions. For example, table 2.1 in stage 3 of the report confirms that the Maghtab site "contains hazardous wastes and is of significant size and height". If Maghtab is hazardous, why did Scott Wilson propose types of capping that are applicable only to non-hazardous landfills (and in breach of EU legislation if applied to hazardous waste landfills)?

The problem of groundwater contamination at Maghtab is minimised by Scott Wilson, although earlier studies by the University of Malta show that pollution of groundwater by nickel at Maghtab is eight times the accepted EU level for drinking water (lead contamination is also significant). However, Chris Ciantar, from Wasteserv, declared (The Times, March 13) that groundwater at Maghtab is within the EU limits for drinking water!

Wasteserv's credibility is further challenged as it continues to ignore priority problems of contamination that have plagued the Maghtab area. A similar approach is seen in the Scott Wilson report when it concentrates on minor issues and decided to include a number of lengthy auxiliary reports by local consultants on "ecological assets", namely the plants and shrubs growing on the landfill and its surroundings!

But what about the impact of the landfill on people? Why did all of these reports fail to mention and monitor the significantly high level of congenital diseases borne by people in the landfill area? What about the quality of drinking water that these people and others have to live (or die) with?

Why is an engineering report on the stability of the landfill absent, even if Maghtab is over 60 metres high and dangerously dipping towards the coast road?

Meanwhile, geological and hydro geological studies (considered a priority by the EU and US legislation in the case of landfills) that evaluate the migration of pollutants in groundwater are dismissed as unimportant!

Evidently, Mr Pullicino and Wasteserv have a peculiar set of priorities. The first priority is the usual friends of friends and political acolytes; next are the flowering plants growing on waste at Maghtab and, finally, at the lowest level of priority comes the safety of ordinary people who have to pay taxes to finance these irrelevant reports!

The Scott Wilson report also concludes that at Maghtab there is "little generation of conventional landfill gas (methane)" (not surprising for a 30-year-old landfill). What is surprising is that the government will be spending millions of taxpayers' liri to install gas wells to extract this gas! Indeed, a tender document detailing the drilling and installation of these gas wells has already been issued.

The tender document also requests detailed monitoring of Maghtab's groundwater and particulate matter (hazardous dust inhaled by residents and passers-by). Apparently, the government is acknowledging that such monitoring was absent or insufficient in the Scott Wilson report. In view of these deficiencies, how can the government prioritise on the hazards at Maghtab and respond to these with an effective remediation strategy?

In other words, is the proposed expensive gas extraction system really a priority or was it selected arbitrarily by someone? Significantly, the drawings of the gas wells in the tender document bear the Scott Wilson logo!

The EU directive on landfills requires that the closure procedure for landfills has to include capping of the landfill with low permeability materials.

Despite this, the tender document does not mention capping anywhere, albeit a cap should be placed before installing the gas wells! Apparently, EU legislation has now become unimportant for Mr Pullicino, although it did win his party the last general election! Another case of "practical politics", translated in the vernacular to fooling the electorate?

Capping of Maghtab would greatly reduce the inhalation of hazardous particulate matter and eliminate most groundwater contamination that adversely affects citizens' health. As happened in the case of eco tax on plastic bags, the government is not targeting the priority problems and instead will spend taxpayers' money on a gas extraction system at Maghtab that will not mitigate the most urgent hazards.

Mr Pullicino elegantly sums up government policy when he makes a Freudian slip in his article (March 10). He boasts that this country has "put waste at the top of its agenda".

Indeed, the present administration has excelled in wasting the nation's human resources and wasting more of Malta's meagre financial resources on wrong priorities, including the friends of friends. The people have been fooled for long enough and have now given their verdict on the PN's agenda at the recent local elections.

Mr Mizzi is the Labour Party's main spokesman for infrastructural services.