Inquiry on mepa concluded

The government has been handed the inquiry report into the way the Malta Environment and Planning Authority handled the illegal excavations in Xemxija where a landslide last January left a house dangling in mid-air.

It was The Times that first exposed the mudslide and later confirmed with Mepa that the works being carried out were not covered by a permit and that the area is earmarked as an outside development zone.

Headed by Mepa's auditor Joe Falzon, the inquiry team was tasked with establishing whether Mepa had taken all the measures at its disposal and whether enforcement procedures were adequate, among other things. The inquiry was ordered by the Environment Minister.

Mr Falzon confirmed that the inquiry was over and that he personally handed the report to Environment Minister George Pullicino yesterday.

The ministry said that the document would be made public shortly, along with the government's comments, once it is analysed.

"The minister will be busy in Vienna with an EU ministerial conference on GMOs but we should be able to make the document public soon," a ministry spokesman said.

In the days that followed the stories in The Times, Mepa came under fire for the way it had handled the case.

Over the years, two enforcement notices were placed on the Xemxija site, in 2002 (315/02) and 2004 (762/04). Excavations, however, continued sporadically up to just before the mudslide occurred.

Besides the enforcement notices, the authority took the developer to court for destroying carob trees. Mepa, however, did not pull the plug on the excavations despite its own claims that the notices had been breached.

Eventually the developers, Polidano Brothers, applied for a development application. After the first enforcement notice was issued they applied for a permit to develop residential units complete with garages along with a structure that would shore up the adjacent bypass - the inner lane of which had collapsed back in 2000.

Residents are strongly opposing the development, arguing that issuing a permit in an outside development zone when the law has been flouted repeatedly would be a travesty of Mepa rules.

Meanwhile, the developer has placed concrete blocks under the apartment block instead of the foundations which were exposed by the mudslide.