Maghtab rehabilitation to start by end summer

The rehabilitation programme for the Maghtab dump should get underway towards the end of the summer, after a German-Maltese consortium, Hasse/Vassallo Builders, won the €7.5 million contract for extraction and monitoring of toxic gases.

The contract forms part of a larger EU-funded project for the rehabilitation of the dumps at Maghtab, Qortin and Wied Fulija. It involves the installation of a network of shafts to extract toxic gases and the monitoring of the emissions which should be reduced by half by the end of next year.

The start of the rehabilitation programme is substantially behind schedule, although according to WasteServ CEO Vince Magri, the delay is manageable.

The €8.4 million worth of EU funds attached to this first phase of the programme are tied to a deadline for completion of works - December 2007. The contract should have been awarded last September but the winning bid has only just been selected.

The delay was caused by an appeal lodged by one of the bidders, a Dutch-Maltese consortium, half way through the selection process, after their bid was discarded, Mr Magri explained.

The original plan was for the contractors to give a hand-over lasting a year to the team of people who will by the end of next year be ready to take over the monitoring and extraction of the gases, a process which will last a number of years.

But the hand-over period will have to be shortened considerably because of the delay, which "shouldn't be a problem" since WasteServ had planned for leeway, Mr Magri said. The whole rehabilitation of Maghtab is expected to take some 10 years. Another phase will involve the transformation of the site into a national park, a call for tenders for which has just issued.

The gases contract should be signed this week and the work start towards the end of summer. A pilot project will first be carried out to give the contractors a clearer picture of what they are dealing with. Once this is over, towards the end of the year, the first gas extraction should start.

The Scott Wilson report, dubbed the X-Ray of the landfills in 2002 by the then Environment Minister Francis Zammit Dimech, had underscored the presence of the gases at the heart of the dump and the fires they produce as one of the biggest problems relating to the landfills.

The organic waste mass within the mixture of waste contained within the mound raises the temperature which then cause fires, creating emissions of toxic gases. The average temperature within the centre of this mass was recorded at an average of 180 degrees Celsius.

The gases will now be extracted. Depending on the viability of the gas found, it will either be burnt at very high temperatures to produce clean emissions into the atmosphere or used to produce energy.

"We still don't know the quantities of the gases we'll be finding at Maghtab and whether it can be turned to energy. We certainly can use the gas which will be extracted from the engineered landfills at Zwejra (which is next to Maghtab)," Mr Magri continued.

For this purpose, a substation has been built on site. It is estimated that the gas extracted from the engineered landfills will generate enough energy to service 3,000 households for some 15 years.

Bonnici Brothers Ltd are finishing what are known as enabling works, which involve the levelling off of certain parts of the Maghtab dump in a way that would enable the Hasse/Vassallo team to start work.