The planning authority’s environment unit is “highly concerned” about taking up some 7,000 square metres of undeveloped agricultural land in Xgħajra to landscape the government’s sewage treatment plant.

This was considered to be a “further obliteration of what little still survives of Xgħajra’s rural landscape such that, on balance, it would constitute an additional adverse impact of the plant and its consequential interventions rather than a mitigation measure,” the directorate said.

Its concerns were expressed in reaction to an impact report commissioned as part of a development application to add a water polishing plant and reclamation infrastructure and carry out landscaping works.

The take-up of land was over and above the sizeable area of countryside that was already taken up to accommodate the plant, the directorate noted.

Before the plant was built in 2008, the area was made up of dry or abandoned fields with rubble walls but was transformed into an “industrial” site.

The largest sewage plant in Malta, South Sewage Treatment Plant at Ta’ Barkat, Xgħajra, aims to treat 80 per cent of the generated sewage.

The plant already biologically treats waste water before it is discharged in the sea but due to its high salinity, it has little or no use at all.

The polishing plant will be capable of handling around 12,000 cubic metres a day of secondary treated sewage effluent for a potential output of approximately 9,600 cubic metres a day of highly polished, reclaimed water.

While acknowledging the architect’s efforts to solve a “problematic site”, the environment directorate had its reservations about the landscaping as the “rationale” behind the proposed works “fails to integrate the development into the surrounding landscape”.

Instead it tried to hide the plant behind a “high artificial embankment that does not follow the natural contours, such that the profile of the embankment would constitute a visual intrusion in the landscape”.

The landscaping would “only mask” the plant, and incompletely, from a limited range of viewpoints.

However, it would still be “completely exposed” and “unmitigated” from the sea and coastal track, which were both highlighted as being of paramount importance.

The directorate “is further concerned” that this particular component did not adequately address environmental concerns that remained unaddressed.