Destruction and neglect

Three and a half years ago, 80 metres of retaining wall built 400 years ago to keep the sea out of the then newly constructed Salini salt pans - allegedly the largest and oldest commercial salt pans, until 2003 still in regular use in Europe - collapsed into what is called Port Burmurrad, rendering them useless.

Minister Censu Galea some time later placed a half page in The Times reminding the relevant department to rebuild small collapsed sections on the Naxxar side of the salt pans as well.

An answer was forthcoming, giving a two-year timescale before the pans could be harvested once more.

Time ran out before the summer salt season was due to be prepared in 2006. Nothing has been done to date and this important local asset close by the newly forested area that comprises part of Burmurrad National Park is a disgusting reminder of the total ineptitude of various sectors when it comes to safeguarding our heritage, providing sites worth visiting and keeping all such sites in prestige condition.

Two years ago, to the satisfaction of all of us who live within smelling distance of the two canals that should provide a constant flow of water around the perimeter of the salt pans, they were, being dredged - after two decades.

Sadly, it would appear that at least one NGO made such vociferous threats about some relatively unimportant, except to the thin minority, endangered object of supreme disinterest to most of us who are regularly forced to endure revolting odours that emanate from this wasteland, that dredging of the canal on the Naxxar side of the pans stopped and has never been finished.

Before my bête noir hastily puts pen to paper - I moved to my current home above the salt pans in 1972 when there was still an almost constant flow of water round the peripheral wall of the pans, no unpleasant smells and far more varieties of interesting plants than there are now that the ditch is blocked with sediment.