Mepa documents 'prove serious flaws' in process

The decision to site an upgraded waste recycling plant in Sant'Antnin, Marsascala, was a "forgone conclusion" despite the studies carried out to look into the possibility of locating the upgraded plant elsewhere, according to an internal Mepa e-mail quoted in a dossier compiled by a group lobbying against the proposed plant.

The dossier says the e-mail was sent by the manager at the Malta Environment and Planning Authority's Forward Planning Unit to the case officer taking care of the application and a host of other Mepa officials.

"I distinctly remember a site outside Hal Far industrial estate being discussed at MPT (Major Projects Team) level. Why was this discarded," the manager asked in his e-mail.

"...From a strategic point of view, therefore it appears that the alternative sites did not qualify as alternative sites primarily because of size. Therefore, the Sant'Antnin site was a forgone conclusion from the beginning."

The dossier was yesterday presented to MPs on their way to Parliament yesterday.

The chairman of the Committee Against the Proposed Recycling Plant, Darren Marmarà, told The Times it was no longer just the anti-plant lobby saying the process was flawed. "With this document we prove that even Mepa's own officers pointed out serious flaws within the process."

Committee secretary Joe Sant said the committee now expected Mepa to have the decency to admit to this flaw and start the process anew.

The committee insists the e-mail and other documents in the dossier come from Mepa's own case file in connection with the recycling plant application.

It now intends to take the case to Brussels where it has a meeting with Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas.

The core argument presented in the dossier centres on the process by which Sant'Antnin was confirmed as the best site to develop a new plant. The committee always contended that the process was "flawed" and "vitiated".

The committee says it was Mepa that ordered Wasteserv - as the government agency applying for the Sant'Antnin's redevelopment - to select potential alternative sites to determine whether the plant could be placed in a more suitable location. The sites were selected for a plant of 18,000 square metres, when the waste recycling plant required 47,000 square metres.

The application was approved, as was the site selection process, despite the fact that Mepa officials had expressed concern regarding the selection process, the committee said in its dossier.

Writing to Vince Gauci, Wasteserv's CEO, the case officer working on the application said: "The conclusion reached, that Sant'Antnin is the best option, seemed inevitable..."

Another officer pointed out in an internal e-mail: "If the study was to be taken seriously the sites with the site boundaries as indicated by Mepa would not even have been studied as it is clear that the sites are relatively smaller than that at Marsascala".

The size, in fact, was the main reason why the alternative sites proposed were discarded by the project, a Mepa memorandum, also included in the dossier, indicates. Yet, there was no attempt to find adequate alternatives.

The case for looking at alternative sites had been made by Mepa in view of opposition by residents.

The dossier also cites correspondence in which the Mepa employees stress that the site selection process should incorporate public consultation. Not only was this not done, the dossier points out, but the actual sitting in which the site selection process was approved - before the meeting that endorsed the outline development application - took place behind closed doors.

According to the minutes of that meeting, also attached to the dossier, Louis Cassar, Peter Zammit and Joe Brincat, Labour's nominee on the board, registered their objections to the site selection report.

When contacted for its reaction yesterday morning, a Mepa spokesman said the authority was not able to comment at such short notice.