Mepa rules and proposals worth exploring

The Malta Environment and Planning Authority has made great strides in the last couple of years as the newly-invigorated planning regulator under fresh political and administrative leadership. It was therefore disconcerting to learn of a hiccup in its apparent progress. This concerned the recent case in Siġġiewi, where a major project in a built-up area of the village, involving the developer, his architect and the local residents, appears to have been handled with less than the sensitivity or the clarity required in such instances.

The facts are as follows. When Mepa issued the development planning permit, the construction site management plan specifically required the developer “to cut the stone” on site “in large blocks, which would then be transported to an authorised place where several products could be manufactured”. The clear implication was that the stone from this site would be reused and recycled instead of being discarded as rubble.

The regulator felt compelled to suspend works on site last year when the contractor ignored a number of conditions in the management plan. He had begun to experiment with cutting and stone-dressing the stones into smaller blocks, which not only generated large quantities of dust in the area, to the great inconvenience of residents, but also transformed the site into what Mepa deemed to be “an unmanaged quarry”. This led to several months of wrangling between the contractor and the planning authority.

A month ago, Mepa received a request from the contractor’s architect for an amendment to be made to the previous management plan. The architect said they wished “to revert to the traditional method of excavating the stone (on site) using a pneumatic hammer”. Mepa instantly gave its approval to the architect’s request, which, it argues, it had no alternative to doing “as it does in all other construction sites”, even though it is well known that this is more noisy and generates more dust and vibration than the original conditions laid down.

Although, in itself, this is a relatively small incident, and could well be an isolated one, it does raise matters of concern. Both Mepa and the developer appear to have taken the line of least resistance: the regulator by stopping the works altogether on a technicality rather than trying to find a practical way forward in the interests of encouraging recycling and reuse and the developer by failing to make any positive effort to convince Mepa that what he was proposing made sense in the circumstances.

The issue of whether Malta is serious about the need to conserve precious limestone resources seems to have been lost in the clamour of argument. Recycling and reuse should form an intrinsic part of national policy and, yet, in this case Mepa appears to have taken the easy route in acquiescing to the request to revert to the dumping option. As a result, an opportunity to find a way out for what might have worked in this particular case – and, indeed, revolutionised the way we use this finite resource – was missed.

Mepa says it is no longer responsible for the enforcement of site management regulations and that these now fall under the Ministry for Resources and Rural Affairs. If so, did the ministry step in when the contravention came to light?

For the sake of clarity and the maintenance of confidence in the “new” Mepa, it would seem important to ensure that processes in both the regulator and the ministry are reviewed to learn the right lessons for the future from this particular incident.