The Mġarr outrage

I refer to Peter Gingell’s rebuttal of the statement by the Ramblers’ Association of Malta, Flimkien għal Ambjent Aħjar, Friends of the Earth Malta and the Malta Organic Agriculture Movement (on whose behalf I write). Mr Gingell’s assertion that the outline permit granted to the Mġarr petrol station was no longer valid might have impressed those with little knowledge of planning policy and rules. We were only impressed by the amount of waffle in his statement. I explain why.

We stand by our affirmation that the outline permit granted in 2006 expired in March 2011 before the full development permit was granted in July 2011. The fact that a full development permit was requested in 2008 is totally irrelevant. The five years’ validity span of the outline permit began in 2006. This had expired when the new permit was granted. Hence the Mepa Board was no longer legally obliged to grant the full permit. A new permit could only be justified on the basis of whether it is compatible or not with current planning legislation and policy, definitely not on the basis of an expired past decision.

More importantly, what was submitted in 2008 was a very different application to that of 2006. This is immediately obvious from the fact that the 2006 application covered an area over twice the size of the area in the outline permit. Originally a petrol station was applied for! Now the petrol station accompanies a car wash, panel beater/sprayer, vehicle showroom and access road!

The fact that the new project covered twice the area of the original one renders Mr Gingell’s reference to the environment impact assessment (EIA) that had been carried out for the outline permit simply laughable. Does he really believe that this EIA too is still valid? It is clear that it required updating as a minimum in order to incorporate consideration of the two-fold enlarged site and the new activities.

Does Mepa need to be reminded of recent cases when full development permits were refused despite the fact that an outline permit had been granted? If the granting of an outline permit did not constrain Mepa to issue a full permit in those cases, why did it have greater weight in a case as abusive as this one? It was sad to have the Mepa’s PR official quote with pride the fact that the “public deed” constrained the applicant to abide by Mepa regulations! But the applicant had been flouting them with impunity for several years! This actually means that the authority was caving in to environmental blackmail, and certainly not an example of strictness on permit conditions as Mr Gingell would have us believe.

Mr Gingell is silent about the 10 Mepa regulations which Mepa’s own case officer lists in relation to the application. That the case officer listed them in the first place is proof of their relevance but inexplicably he stops short of applying them to the case. We wish to learn why a case officer’s time and expertise was wasted on the report if there was a foregone conclusion by way of outline permit commitment.

It is however the last paragraph of Mr Gingell’s letter that betrays the cruel reality of what decides the fate of our precious ODZ: “Mepa reaffirms that both the Environment Protection Directorate and the Planning Directorate, on assessing the full development application, were obliged to recommend this project for approval given that it reflected what was already granted (our emphasis) in the 2006 outline permit”.

We ask what need for experts to head the directorates, indeed what need for directorates, if they had no say on the decision? We do not believe that the new director of Environment Protection was also constrained to silence because of the outline permit. On the contrary we expected her to object strongly to the gross disparity between the two applications. Or are we to take it that she is to be similarly silent for the next five years on all cases where an outline permit has been generously granted in pre-Mepa reform days?

It is therefore not surprising that Mr Gingell sidesteps, or rather conveniently ignores, most of the reasons we gave for considering this approval a major faux pas by the Mepa Board. Digesting the waffle of the Mepa spokesman, we stand more determined by our claim that the permit in question should be revoked or rescinded.