A funny thing happened...

It is pointless blaming EIA consultants when it is the Environment Impact Statement process itself in Malta that creaks and stretches credibility way beyond snapping point.

In the tortuous and murky paths leading up to the eventual and inevitable approval of certain dubious projects, a number of which are government promoted, many an EIA has reminded me of the bawdy musical A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum, where the music of Stephen Sondheim accompanied an amusing but by now cliché-ridden romp inspired by the farces of the ancient Roman playwright Plautus.

The recent orderly but vacuous consultation meeting held of all places at Delimara to discuss the proposed extension of the Delimara Power Station was a typical case in point.

Given that the new plant is planned to be run on heavy fuel oil, the EIA co-ordinator's statement that diesel might be better from an environmental point of view, not least because it would do away with the problem of disposing of fly ash, must have put the promoters of the project in a quandary.

In the same way, given the projected hazardous waste generation, the very unclear health impacts and the potential impacts on marine traffic and environment, to mention a few, one found it hard to figure out whether the EIA consultants' overall assessment of the project as proposed and accepted by the government's adjudication board is now considered to be negative or positive.

It still needs to be established whether public health did come first in the choice of the fuel to fire the power station.

The HIA, Health Impact Assessment, presented as an appendix to the EIA is in my opinion not sufficiently thorough, not professionally drawn up, not comprehensive, not holistic and not in depth enough; as one would expect from such a mega project with in-built prototype elements, particularly regarding mitigation and abatement.

Mepa is not known to have medically qualified officers to evaluate the health impact assessments submitted to it, while serious complaints have come from the EU that the Environmental Health Department has allegedly not addressed seriously enough the impact of other waste-related projects like the Marsa incinerator. Given these facts, I hope that the EIA consultants and Mepa itself will take heed of my unbiased view that the least one can expect is for the EIA consultants to go back to the drawing board and engage in a truly independent review of the health aspects, which have been considered so far to be the weakest link of the proposed Delimara extension project.

The impacts of the hazardous waste do not seem to have been sufficiently addressed at all - health impacts, transport impacts, impacts of proposed location etc.

In our view, these need to be probed in more depth since this is an integral part of the process of the development concept and should thus be satisfactorily addressed in the EIA itself.

There are other grey areas which need to be addressed in a satisfactory way too. Given the time lag that normally ensues until Mepa authorisation is obtained to export such hazardous waste as fly ash, the mere undertaking to export it as a mitigation measure is not sufficient since storage capacity, possibly in excess of that currently existing, might be needed. This is particularly so until the relevant export procedures have been cleared and third country importers have been identified.

Since it has been stated in the EIS that in case of abatement equipment malfunction the plant could be operated at reduced loads and even shut down in parts, the mind boggles when trying to figure out how this will impact on the electricity supply - even more so when one realises that the power plant extension is expected to generate far less electricity than the existing Marsa Power Station itself.

While the government still has to publish the Solid Waste Management Strategy, which according to the minister concerned was recently approved by Cabinet, the EIA consultants made it clear in their report that incineration at Marsaxlokk as a proposed project is public knowledge!

Given this categorical statement, are the said consultants envisaging usage of such a proposed incineration plant to treat any of the waste generated by the power plant extension at Delimara? On the other hand, how do they really intend to treat it alternately at the Marsa incineration plant? Have any technical feasibility studies been carried out to ascertain if the sludge can be used to power the existing incinerator when so far the operators have been unable to fuel through animal waste? On the other hand, how can the fuel sludge be treated by the Marsa incinerator, if the incineration plant is not yet in a position to tackle chemical waste and is considered by various independent third parties to be over stretched?

The noise issue remains another big question mark. Rather than relying on independent sources, the consultants apparently took as a given the specs provided by the "successful bidders" with the consequence that rather than being provided by independent external sources, the data regarding noise was provided by the manufacturer and not on Enemalta's responsibility, particularly since we were informed in the said report that Enemalta preferred to act as a conduit by merely forwarding to consultants the manufacturers' information.

brincat.leo@gmail.com, www.leobrincat.com