Xemxija still awaiting rehabilitation

There are still no signs of any rehabilitation at Polidano Brothers' site in Xemxija, four months after the Malta Environment and Planning Authority ordered the company to restore the illegally excavated site to its original state.

Onsite inspections and photographic evidence confirm that no work has been carried out apart from the emergency measures taken after a mudslide at the site.

When asked whether plans for the rehabilitation of the site have been submitted or whether the authority had stipulated a target date for completion, Mepa said the developer had informed it how he would be making the site stable again and that this phase was complete.

Mepa ordered the developer last April to rehabilitate the site following an inquiry, led by the authority's own audit officer. In its conclusions the audit report lambasted Mepa for the way it left the "developer do as he pleases" at the site, which was excavated illegally over a stretch of about six years.

The excavations made the area unstable and a mudslide in January actually left a neighbouring house perilously jutting out after a section of earth beneath its foundations came away.

Polidano Brothers has still not submitted a method statement indicating how it intends to rehabilitate the site.

Mepa said the enforcement notice was still active and that it obliged the "offender" to rehabilitate the site in an adequate manner. When pressed, the authority said it had not been informed of a target date for completion of the works and that there was no method statement for landscaping the site.

The complete rehabilitation and landscaping of the site was a cardinal recommendation in the auditor's report on the Xemxija case.

In fact, the audit report had recommended that Mepa should itself set the terms of reference for the rehabilitation. It had also criticised the authority for failing to take effective action "despite having ample experience of the developer's behaviour". Mepa was deemed to be indirectly responsible for what happened since it had failed to stop the illegal excavation.

Questions sent to the developer remained unanswered.