The government has no plans for other national projects that encroach on land in outside development zones, according to the Office of the Prime Minister.
The commitment comes on the back of a controversial decision last year to locate a private university investment on ODZ land at Żonqor Point in Marsascala.
Last Monday during an interview on TVM discussion programme Reporter, Deputy Prime Minister Louis Grech said the government had made “a conscious decision” not to encroach further on ODZ.
Asked whether this translated into a commitment by the government not to propose projects for ODZ areas, a spokesman for the Prime Minister said the ODZ area will not be reduced. “This is a clear political commitment.”
“The ODZ area will not be reduced... If there will be an exception to this rule outside the provisions in the SPED [the overriding land-use policy], something which government does not envisage, it will be made public and discussed in Parliament according to what was already agreed during the parliamentary debate on the planning authority demerger,” the spokesman said.
The Prime Minister affirmed that government does not envisage any other national projects that encroach on ODZ land
However, he defended the location of the American University of Malta – now an institute – at the Żonqor site, which will gobble up 18,000 square metres of ODZ land.
The project proposed by Jordanian investors had originally earmarked 90,000 square metres of ODZ land in Marsascala before it was scaled down.
“AUM is a project of national importance and was the only national project the government submitted for development in an ODZ,” the Prime Minister’s spokesman said.
He said the Prime Minister was “affirming” that government did not envisage any other national project that encroached on ODZ land.
However, the spokesman said the government would still go ahead with the “tweaking” of development boundaries promised by former parliamentary secretary Michael Falzon but with a fresh commitment not to reduce the ODZ area.
The justification for the tweaking process has always been to address “injustices” created by the highly controversial 2006 rationalisation process that saw a land mass the size of Siġġiewi opened up to development.
Environmentalists fear that tweaking was just a cover for allowing more virgin land to be included in the development zones.
“We will not reduce the ODZ area. Injustices aren’t addressed by creating new ones,” the spokesman said when asked about the tweaking exercise.
However, sources said the government commitment meant that any increase in development boundaries as a result of the tweaking process would be compensated for by redrawing the boundaries elsewhere. “The net impact would be zero loss of ODZ areas,” the sources said, adding that the laborious process to address “pockets” of concern created by the 2006 exercise was proceeding at a slow pace.
kurt.sansone@timesofmalta.com