Quarry owners do as they please – AD

Quarrying in Malta remains unregulated and owners fail to restore the area once they are done extracting stone, Alternattiva Demokratika yesterday said.

Standing outside an Attard quarry, AD spokesman and councillor Ralph Cassar said the quarry showed the government had never felt the need to introduce laws to set clear limits and parameters within which quarries can operate.

“Quarry owners are left to hide behind the lack of legislation which regulates their industrial activity to the detriment of residents,” he said.

According to the police operation licence, upon completion of rock excavation work, quarry owners are obliged to start restoring the area. However, not one centimetre of land had been rehabilitated, Mr Cassar said, pointing out that rock excavation extended beyond the established boundaries in the Attard quarry still in use.

He said the quarry had been allowed to store construction waste without any controls or enforcement procedures.

He added the Malta Environment and Planning Authority had unveiled a new system of permits for quarries in 2010 which would impose new and modern conditions on the operations of quarries. “We would like to know what stage this process has reached,” he said.

Earlier this month, Mepa issued a guidance document for public consultation on the monitoring of vibrations during quarry blasting.

The authority said the guidelines aimed to clarify the responsibilities of quarry operators, stipulate threshold levels for vibration monitoring and determine other specifications related to location, design and sensitivity of the monitoring equipment.

Mr Cassar said what while the guidelines were a first step in quarry regulation, AD felt that the process needed to be speeded up.