Updated: Mepa's Enforcement Office asked to halt Bahrija development

(Adds Nature Trust's request)

The Ramblers Association has written to the Enforcement Office of the Malta Environment and Planning Authority calling on it to halt controversial development in Bahrija valley on land belonging to PN president Victor Scerri.

It said that various conditions of the restoration method statement to which development permission had been subjected, were being carelessly disregarded.

In a letter to the planning authority's enforcement office, the association said: "Your enforcement to stop works is being solicited as there are enough reasons to halt the development immediately."

The Ramblers Association said that the development had exceeded considerably the external footprint and floor area. Serious disturbance was also being caused to adjacent fields and rubblewalls.

It said that endemic tress and shrubs were destroyed completely and removed from site, truck-loads of blue clay were removed and carted away, the adjacent rubble-wall retaining the field above was damaged by the heavy machinery used and covered with excavation material, the heavy machiney with metal chain wheels was used on the exisiting asphalted and concrete roads, and construction material was dumped on an adjacent field.

Moreover, there was no trace of the development permit on site and third party rights were being infringed in that the unsuitable use of heavy machinery, and the upheaval it made, caused very serious ecological damage.

Nature Trust Malta filed a separate report on the damage being done to the fragile ecosystem by the unsuitable development procedures.

It said that further to its other reports on the development, all of which went by without as much as an acknowledgement, the protected freshwatercourse and Maltese Freshwater Crab and Painted Frog populations were in a perilous state.