Donald Trump aims to seriously disable the US environment protection agency if elected. Here in Malta we seem to be one step ahead as regulations and standards achieved after many years of hard work are quietly unravelled without fuss.

On the one hand we have an Opposition party which speaks vaguely of undefined exceptions to Outside Development Zone restrictions. And on the other hand we have the government making decisions that are tailor-made to serve certain business interests, as succinctly observed by sociologist and activist Michael Briguglio. (‘Labour’s oligarchy?’, Times of Malta, February 15)

A fair decade after the inception of the Malta Environment and Planning Authority, with infringements at no less than 67 quarry sites, the authority found itself still struggling to regulate quarries that came into being with only skimpy pre-1992 police permits and no enforceable conditions.

Foreign experts, engaged for the 2003 Minerals Subject plan, were aghast.

They jotted down that the monitoring and enforcement system was not working sufficiently well, as evidenced by the amount of quarrying taking place outside permit boundaries.

With quarries ballooning at will, the then Mepa public relations officer Ivan Fenech insisted in a letter to this newspaper that the “free-for-all attitude of the past is no longer tolerated”. At the time, the authority was optimistically looking forward to a more regulated industry where the principles of sustainabilility were to be applied “at all stages of mineral-related development”.

After years of environmental mayhem, operators of quarries at Dingli Cliffs appear to have come up trumps.

For many years, the operators of Quarry no. 31 continued to go about their business as if they were eternally above any environmental and planning requirements and could do as they pleased in the middle of this sensitive area.

The original 1991 permit was granted for no more than a ‘garage’ where the quarry now massively pocks the land.

It will be interesting to see whether the descheduling at Quarry no. 31 will set a pattern that could influence upcoming appeals on infringements at other quarries

The Archaeology Society and Flimkien Għal Ambjent Aħjar weighed in on a 2008 application to construct a batching plant at the site and the permit was refused.

“Rather than building a batching plant, the only work that should be allowed on this site is the rehabilitation of the various past enforcements in this quarry,” agreed the case officer. Fearing the worst, he added:

“Should the board decide to overturn (Mepa’s refusal) all consultations need to be carried out, including those with the Environment Impact Assessment team, since the application will be subject to an EIA.”

Last August, the quarry operators were finally rewarded for their unabashed long-term plundering of the environment by the Parliamentary Secretary for Planning and Simplification of Administrative Processes, more recently deposed as a result of a Lands Department scandal.

Michael Falzon, not for nothing a fireworks aficionado, endorsed the surgical removal of a piece of land, relevant to the operations of both quarries, removing its status from a scheduled buffer zone important to the surrounding ecology and landscape value.

This effectively twisted the environmental arm of Mepa, which saw all its well-supported arguments against expansion of quarrying in the area blown apart.

It was as if, by de-scheduling a part of land that overlapped with the expanding quarries, the entire surroundings – which could be prone to the effects of quarry operations – conveniently disappeared down a black hole.

An appeal by the operator is now due to be heard by the Environment and Planning Review Tribunal next month.

It will be interesting to see whether the descheduling at Quarry no. 31 will set a pattern that could influence upcoming appeals on infringements at other quarries.

Mepa – now demerged with an amputated arm – had noted that irregularities in the area were ongoing ever since the early 1980s when a certain Peter Borg of Rabat first applied for an agricultural pump room, where today one of the quarries sits.

In 1993, quarry HM 30 was transferred to Gaetano Abdilla, one of four brothers ordered to pay a €10,000 fine last June after the Malta Resources Authority became concerned about the quarry depth being too close to the water table.

During a 2012 inspection, MRA officers were alarmed to find that sub-standard diesel fuel with 40 times the permitted level of sulphur was being stored in the quarry overlying the water table. Parts of the quarry at the time had been illegally excavated to just 26 metres from maximum permissible depth, as the operators lagged behind with a retrospective permit application.

What mainly irked Mepa was that the devious planning applications should have been more transparent about asking for sanctioning rather than ignoring the fact that the deep excavation beyond permitted limits had already taken place.

A case officer report, which reflected submissions by Nature Trust and Din l-Art Ħelwa, reads:

“The site is situated outside the development zone, surrounded by designated sites of ecological, archaeological and scientific importance while the area is very sensitive in view that is situated between the scheduled coastal cliffs and Għar il-Kbir and a concentration of historic cart ruts known as Clapham Junction, a Level 1 archaeological site.”

However, the Ministry for Rural Affairs and Environment of the day declared it had no objections, posing narrowly that “the site is a quarry and no agricultural land is affected”. This attitude ran roughshod over the surrounding environment.

The MRA water directorate at the time also recommended against extension of the quarry to a depth of 190 metres.

Abdilla’s quarry came with only a blasting licence and a police licence giving the original permitted excavation depth as 15 metres. The quarry operator had a condition from the Museums Department to leave a buffer zone of 120 metres from Għar il-Kbir cave dwelling. The conditions were not respected neither by the previous owner Borg, nor subsequently by Abdilla.

In 1995, an enforcement notice was issued for unpermitted digging beyond allowed limits. However, on appeal, the notice was withdrawn.

Three years went by with excavations continuing in defiance until another enforcement notice was issued.

By that time the contravention was taking place on protected land, since Mepa had scheduled the cliffs of mainland Malta as a Level 2 Area of Ecological Importance and Area of High Landscape Value in 1996.

Expansion continued. In 1999, two of the Abdilla brothers were found guilty by the Court of Magistrates of drilling shot holes (for explosives) outside the licensed boundary in a scheduled site.

The Court of Appeal ordered the quarry operator to reinstate the area and co-operate with the enforcement notices, yet compliance remained zero.

In 2009, the quarry operator was found to be digging outside the licensed boundary and was again halted.

The minerals team informed the Commissioner of Lands that the operator had excavated on government land again.

The Abdillas refused to give up but their repeated request to extend the quarry (which extension had already taken place) was turned down again in 2010.

The architect retorted that he had been waiting seven years for Mepa to prepare a management plan for the buffer of a green belt landscaping.

On its part the authority stuck by the principle that the damage had to be repaired before any future considerations of the permit could be made.