This is the story of the sad plight of The Gardens, an enclave of long-established houses with gardens, once a quiet and peaceful residential area:
The destruction of this locality started a few years back. There was a very old carob tree that had been scheduled by Mepa; it was a landmark and a point of reference to anyone not familiar with this locality. Carobs are protected trees and cannot be chopped down; so when the villa had to make way for a block of flats it was stripped of all its huge branches and reduced to a pitiful size.
When winter came it was too weak to withstand the gales and soon it was reduced to a stump. No action was taken by Mepa because as long as there was a small remnant of the tree left, it could always prove that it had taken the necessary steps to "preserve" it.
More destruction was carried on in Olive Street. Here, there was a villa surrounded by a garden in which there were several enormous, old olive trees. One New Year's Eve of two or three years ago, when everyone's mind was on the festivities of the season, a truck parked by the garden gate, and in no time the olive trees, the haunt of hundreds of tiny birds for years and years, were reduced to pulp with an electric saw and dumped who knows where. But olive trees are hardy and not so easy to destroy and in no time the thick trunks left in the soil started sprouting again and this time with a vengeance. Soon there were again one-storey high trees - not for long though because the second time round the developer made sure he would destroy the roots and uprooted them well and proper.
Instead of the olive trees and the garden there is now a gaping hole that has taken months to excavate, in the process shaking the surrounding houses from their foundations, filling the air with dust and shattering the peace to which the residents are entitled.
A few weeks ago it was the turn of a cypress tree; it had taken more than 40 years to grow but it barely took 40 minutes to destroy. It was done early one morning just in time before the excavating machines began to dig the garden and remove the citrus trees, the rose bushes, the honeysuckle. Instead of a villa the developer was given a permit to build a number of flats but as the Italians say l'appetito vien mangiando and so, before the excavation is completed, a new application has been filed to modify the old one - having been given a permit for four flats why not try to build eight?!
Last week the life of yet another 200-year-old carob tree came to a sudden end; it, too was mercilessly chopped down to make way for more apartment blocks. The residents could not believe their eyes when they realised what was taking place behind a hastily erected wall. When someone, in indignation, contacted Mepa, he was informed that permission to fell the tree had been given on condition that two other trees are to be planted in its stead! Now in The Gardens instead of trees there are monstrous cranes; instead of gardens, gaping holes and instead of the chirping of birds there is the grating sound of heavy machinery. Olive, Palm and Oleander streets should be renamed Noise Street, Dust Street and Frustration Street and the whole area called Greed - after the greed of the few who want to prosper at the expense of the rest. I do not entirely blame the developers for this deplorable situation; the real culprit is Mepa and the people who sit on its boards and who carry out its mistaken policies and rubber stamp its decisions.
This institution, which is supposed to be guarding our environment, has become an all-powerful and seemingly unaccountable monster which explains why there is this general feeling of helplessness and impotence in the public. A country is indeed in a sorry state when it allows its institutions to grow into organisations against which the individual feels he can only patiently succumb to their illogical rules.
Once the rape of The Gardens has started there is no stopping it; from now on it will be just a list of more villas and houses turned into maisonettes, flats and penthouses and more gardens disappearing.
Having allowed one villa with its surrounding garden to be turned into six or eight units, the "enlightened" members on the various Mepa boards will be able to cite their own sins as further reason for committing more. The Gardens will be just another building site like the rest of the island and Mepa's classic excuse will be, no doubt, that the building industry is all important for the Maltese economy and that it creates work. But work for whom? Maltese workers seem to be in a minority on most building sites.
As for those who intend to purchase one of the maisonettes being built now, I say: Beware. This is no longer the locality it used to be.
With the proposed intensive development of Pender Place and the building of a fly-over road, residents are, for the next years, likely to be facing the deafening noise of machinery, tonnes of dust swirling around, roads blocked by concrete mixers and cranes and broken pavements - not to mention the continual threat to their mental and physical health.