A wave of residents’ protests is surging up at the moment. One main cause is the tsunami of high-rise proposals, but there have also been uprisings over projects in Wied Għomor and in Lija, and now also over neglected roads at Baħrija. This Wednesday at 7pm, Sliema residents will gather in protest at the Qui-si-Sana public garden.
Unfortunately, projects with big money behind them receive more attention from the government than hundreds of residents. Large-scale projects tend to think little of inconveniencing the neighbourhood, and rarely give much back. Residents are treated as opponents.
The principle of not disturbing neighbours is accepted in smaller things, like playing music late, but apparently not when permanently blocking people’s sunlight, filling their houses with dust, and inconveniencing them with excessive traffic. The development sector is a battlefield. Many of us have been struggling in the trenches for years.
The new Environment Minister, Jose Herrera, has just landed in this tricky sector. Unfortunately for him, while development planning falls under the Prime Minister and Deborah Schembri, with Robert Musumeci as consultant, he will probably receive a lot of the flak for their decisions. I guess that is in their favour, but not necessarily in his.
For example, so far nobody has been especially interested in Schembri’s thoughts about high rise, although she is now responsible for it. But Herrera has already been quizzed. The reality is that land use and construction, on this tiny island, are major environmental concerns. The current protests are all about this.
Last week Herrera gave an interview to the Sunday Times of Malta. He presented some interesting ideas hat deserve to be explored. For example, setting up an agency called Environment Malta for enforcement, and perhaps to manage nature parks. He recalled that in his previous ministry he wanted to set up an agency called Property Malta, focusing on bringing vacant properties back into use.
But the bombshell, to me, was his intention to push forward plans for waste incineration. This takes some courage, after extremely stiff opposition in the past. The former government had mentioned this idea in waste management strategies and plans since at least 2001, but people were terrified. It was controversial and was not taken forward.
If it is a viable and clean enough solution, and preferable to other options, then perhaps it could be taken forward
One main issue was identifying a suitable site, as nobody wants to live beside an incinerator, just as nobody wants to live near a power station or a landfill. The former government had tentatively proposed Delimara to recover energy from incineration. Herrera has now suggested building an incinerator on a disused oil rig. Whether this is feasible or not remains to be seen.
People also resisted the idea due to bad memories of the incinerator at St Luke’s Hospital. Its chimney belched out black smoke over the surrounding urban areas. It was a health hazard and a sore point for many years, and was not in line with EU legislation, but it was only finally shut down around nine years ago.
The former Opposition fanned the flames. Just two weeks before the 2013 election, Leo Brincat, then shadow minister, scaremongered that the government was keeping plans for an incinerator under wraps due to their sensitivity.
After becoming environment minister himself, Brincat did not directly propose an incinerator, however his waste management plan of 2014 recognises its potential inevitability. The plan cautiously suggests that unless people step up their efforts to minimise and separate waste, we will end up with more landfills or an incinerator.
The truth is, we cannot have more landfills. The 2014 plan clearly confirms this and describes them as the least environmentally-friendly option. The EU is rightly phasing them out.
So the other realistic option put forward is incineration. The plan hopes that everyone will play their part, by separating and minimising waste, to avoid this. That really is wishful thinking. Some kind of waste facility will be necessary, however much is recycled.
Waste management is one of Malta’s biggest environmental challenges, and we don’t have that many feasible options. Would an incinerator, with the technology that exists today, be a possible solution?
Since incineration can generate energy it is seen as part of waste recovery, and not disposal like a landfill. From what I am told, the incineration technology today is a far cry from that available some years ago, and much cleaner than popularly imagined. It is essential for a proper information campaign to be organised, so that people can really understand the facts in what is being proposed.
Herrera’s statements suggest that it may finally be possible to have an objective debate about this issue, after years of scaremongering, hysteria and a complete absence of facts in the public domain.
If incinerating waste has an unacceptable environmental impact, then it should be rejected. But if it is a viable and clean enough solution, and preferable to other options, then perhaps it could be taken forward. We must eventually phase out our landfills, that is certain.
Of course, nobody wants to live near an incinerator. But let’s see what this is really all about, rationally weighing up the implications, before throwing it out. Is it environmentally friendly? Is it feasible? If Herrera can achieve this debate, then that would be quite something.
petracdingli@gmail.com