First-degree burns

Although this is in itself a sticky point, the whole issue in Malta is not solely whether one should opt for waste-to-energy or not but, rather, whether our track record to date offers sufficient reassurances that our environmental health concerns will be adequately addressed and safeguarded or not.

If the Marsa incinerator is anything to go by, one should be more than deeply worried about future prospects. A particular EU mission in Malta sometime back drew my attention to its discomfort and unease about the “no problem” and “business as usual” approach adopted by the Environmental Health Department as far as the running of this plant is concerned.

Every time I raised this issue in the House and in public fora, it invariably and conveniently fell on deaf ears. It was just as worrying that the government opportunistically chose to ignore my repeated public call for an independent audit in the running of the Marsa incinerator.

Although the minister in question regularly boasts of real time monitoring and strict adherence to EU norms and standards, in fact, from perusal of the Wasteserv website, I have long detected that one could easily denote that there were various occasions when the limits imposed were exceeded. Even more so when the plant was down for its maintenance works, which, incidentally, often turn out to be instances far too frequent for comfort.

Various people directly involved have long made it known, in confidence, that the technology being used at the Marsa incinerator is not meant to deal with the mix of waste they are throwing into it.

Monitors might help but they are no guarantee that health hazards are or will be eliminated.

There are so many problems along every step of the process that it is almost impossible to remove such hazards completely. Every step in the process needs to be looked at: From collection of waste, to storage, to consistency of temperatures, to maintenance and scrubbing of filters, to collection and disposal of the different types of hazardous waste it produces.

While it is true that the Labour Party used to criticise the Marsa incinerator for being too big for our needs, at that stage it was merely envisaged to cater for the abattoir. The talk of centralising chemical, clinical and animal waste together came at a later stage.

The minister’s claim that the Marsa incinerator was designed or meant from the start to take various sorts of waste is misleading, to put it mildly.

When the “strategic” decision was taken to go for a more holistic approach, at no stage was provision for adequate cold storage made, so much so that the problem remains unresolved to date. And a master plan is still being drawn up.

In spite of the expensive upgrade that took place to extend the plant’s operational range, as a result, combustion chamber temperatures often ended up running too high while the Malta Environment and Planning Authority is known to have been petitioned to allow the Marsa incinerator to exhaust straight out to the atmosphere very many times.

The necessity and, as the minister put it, the inevitability of maintenance periods, which I believe should also be scrutinised diligently, do not cover the fact that no provision had been made for proper storage of carcasses in the interval.

Which begs the question on a different plane: Is this what is going to happen with the Delimara extension, when the de-sulphuriser needs to be stopped, particularly when the proposed extension will have to be stopped for maintenance, given that in its “initial” years and, possibly, beyond it will be driven on heavy fuel oil?

Does this mean that we shall experience periods of relatively high sulphur emission levels into atmosphere comparable to what is happening at Marsa and Delimara at present, particularly when the new southern plant is closed temporarily for maintenance?

The BWSC plant should be equipped not just with de-SOx but also with a de-NOx abatement system.

Wanting a zero waste strategy runs counter to the government’s incineration plans, which seem to have been temporarily delayed to avoid any further political flak in the south till the post electoral period.

But at day’s end, we should be producing much less waste, through minimisation, waste reduction, reusing and recycling. The old adage that waste grows as economic activities does too has long been abandoned due to the Nordic practice of decoupling between waste and economic growth.

Waste incineration encourages governments and even councils not to bother with recycling or reducing waste. This is not the message we should be sending.

Burning rubbish encourages more waste, is inefficient in producing energy, wastes resources, produces pollution and still produces toxic ash, which needs to be disposed of.

If the government cannot run satisfactorily an incineration plant such as the one at Marsa how can it be entrusted to run a plant in the south of Malta some eight times larger?

Given the EU classification of incineration as providing a form of renewable energy, I have no doubt that the government will find it convenient to go for more burning in waste hungry incinerators to meet targets that could otherwise not be adequately addressed through solar and wind energy and bio fuels applications alone.

brincat.leo@gmail.com

www.leobrincat.com

The author is shadow minister for the environment, sustainable development and climate change.