One foot in the grave

On gently sloping land in Gozo, a series of ponds provide a measured supply of water into terraced citrus groves all year round. Locked away behind lush clumps of bamboo, the reservoirs lie directly under a catchment area perched to one side of the valley leading down to Ramla Bay. It is said that the holding ponds were hidden with intent, to shield them from view when foraging pirates were on the rampage. Or so that story goes...

This is the story of the orange growers, the parish priest and a string of events which have put the aquifer feeding some of Nadur's best citrus groves at risk.

The spring at Ghajn Qasab is named after the bamboo grove that has protected it from marauders over the centuries. Bend double and you can trot through tunnels of green alongside stone irrigation channels connecting the holding ponds.

In times gone by the maze of fronded alleys, connecting one pond to the next, made the water source easier to defend in the event of a raid. Now, the adversary threatens from above.

What was once a permanent, crystal clear spring is in danger of becoming tainted. The land is irrigated from a naturally occurring water source which runs down through underground channels from the hilltop. Excavations for the burial plots of the new Nadur cemetery promoted by the parish may have tampered with, and possibly caused permanent damage to the perched aquifer. Legally, the term aquifer refers to "all underground strata capable of yielding fresh water, including groundwater reservoirs and catchment areas".

The architect responsible for the works has acknowledged that the spring outlet below the cemetery is fed through "a tunnel reaching inwards within the rock". He argues that no one has ever presented any evidence that the tunnel passes beneath the site of the cemetery.

On the other hand, farmers say they saw the water turn cloudy white with stone dust during excavation. Another architect appointed as a court expert had advised against an injunction requested by farmers to halt the development. At the moment the spring runs clear, but they expect water quality to worsen if their appeal fails to stop the permit.

The cemetery is expected to cost over €1m according to a leaflet printed in magenta ink that did the rounds announcing the sale of graves on plan. While still in shell form, 150 graves were snapped up at a discount price of €3,494. The projected sale of another 150 is expected over the next five years, leaving the 25 per cent specified by the Malta Environment and Planning Authority (Mepa) as common graves and some 150 left over for demand beyond 2015.

Farmers in the area fear "the sweat of the dead" will poison their fields if an appeal against the permit for a cemetery falls on deaf ears. The permit was originally turned down, but the decision was overturned on reconsideration and works started, despite a third party appeal.

The Water Services Corporation (WSC), Department of Health and the parish priest as the applicant all had correspondence with Mepa during the processing stage of the permit. The WSC had originally objected to a proposed site that was later dropped, at Ta' Xhajma (near the racecourse) fearing contamination of a borehole.

There was wide disagreement over the Malta Resources Authority (MRA)'s engagement of a geologist, rather than a hydrologist, to determine whether the cemetery would have a negative effect on the spring. Adverse impact on the aquifer was found to be "unlikely" from the geologist's point of view. But a separate report by an independently commissioned hydrologist confirmed that the outlet of the spring and the cemetery excavation site were connected and therefore possible impacts could not be ruled out.

The MRA has asked for measures to be taken at the Ghajn Qasab site to prevent the discharge of dangerous substances into the ground. Methods of containment for surface run-off from the cemetery were also requested. Mepa has called for waterproofing and sealing of graves to prevent leaching into the environment of hazardous chemicals used in burial. There seems to be little trust in the long-term effectiveness of this measure.

According to the case officer, the proposed cemetery clashed with planning policies while bringing no benefits to outweigh the harm it would cause. It was obvious that it would visually dominate and disrupt the surroundings, creating an obtrusive and overbearing feature that would fail to respect the character of the rural area.

Development which could destroy the protected status of any property having natural value falls under Category 9 of the Environment Impact Assessment (EIA) regulations. The application must be assessed in terms of pollution, risk of accidents and environmental sensitivity of the area with regard to the abundance of natural resource and irreversibility of impact.

The file was referred to the EIA team by the planning directorate but was sent back because the proposal was objectionable in principle. There seemed no point in putting the Nadur parish priest, as the developer, through the trouble and expense of producing an impact statement for a development which should clearly have met with resounding refusal.

The recommendation to refuse was overturned with conditions consisting of various self-imposed measures by the developer on himself. An appeal is due to be heard at the Planning Appeals board on November 11.