Walking out of Qala village square, you are led gently downhill in the direction of Ħondoq ir-Rummien where a small bridge carries you across the valley system of Wied il-Marga.
How did a development boundary come to lie in the middle of a valley catchment area?
A wide area of open fields opens like a fan, sloping down to the bridge at its narrowest point. Take a left turn up a winding farmer’s track to the left after crossing the bridge and you are in ancient territory as evidenced by local place-names.
On raised ground, a quiet spot known as Landar il-Qadim is likely to be the site of an old threshing floor, although very little is left of the original. (A better preserved stone threshing floor can be seen at Munxar).
This remnant of an old threshing floor hints that the area has for a very long time been ideal for growing grain, and the natural lines of the landscape aided this process by capturing and funneling water down to where the valley narrows. Unbelievably, this is exactly the spot where developers have been pressing for an Outside Development Zone permit.
At first, the application was for five dwelling units with swimming pools and garages, but then it was scaled down. The permit has been refused several times even after fresh plans were submitted. It has now reached appeal stage, where the developer is contesting the refusal of three dwellings, reduced from five.
A belated flood impact assessment recommended a minor modification to the plans. It involves moving a garage door, part of the proposed development, “to retain existing water culvert inlets in the street boundary wall”. This will entail submitting fresh plans which will allow the applicant to re-enter the permit mill.
New plans to be submitted for a cosmetic modification will not change the substance of the question presented to the appeals tribunal. Here lies the problem.
A construction company, known for its complexes sprouting up all over Gozo, initially submitted this application in 2007 to build five houses with swimming pools in the neck of the valley. Only a small portion of the proposed footprint was actually within the building zone, with the major part of the planned development falling in an ODZ area.
The Malta Resources Authority requested a flood impact assessment. The report noted that the development spilled beyond the building scheme. The Malta Environment and Planning Authority objected, insisting that any development must be limited to within the approved scheme.
The proposal was later scaled down to three dwellings with basement removed to avoid water problems and terraces eliminated so that all ODZ land within the application footprint would remain unbuilt.
It seems that when the building boundary around Qala’s urban centre was drawn it somehow ended up running right down the middle of the valley. It is a mystery how the development zone boundary was extended to include a field in a catchment area instead of stopping at the last building at the edge of the village. Concerns centred around centuries-old wells dug by hand in fields below which risked losing their feed water.
Cut-and-dry case
Unsurprisingly, the assessment found that the property to suffer most from flood damage as a result of the proposed building would be the new development itself, which would be the cause of the its own flood problems. The submitted plans did not take into consideration the fact that the site is crossed by a watercourse which conveys torrents of flood water during a storm.
It comes as no surprise that the proposed development is expected to have a significant effect on surface water flow in the Marga Valley watercourse and could limit surface water flow in the downstream part of the valley “thus affecting the water collected in wells dug in turbazz (rocky clay) further downstream”.
Directing water collected on the roof of the proposed development to a water cistern with a permeable rock base so as not to have any affect on rainfall recharge was suggested. This seemed both to appease the MRA and set a dangerous precedent.
The report blames the road (Triq il-Kunċizzjoni) for flooding and demands a number of interventions that would make it possible for building to take place on the plot for which a planning application has been filed.
The developers, Karkanja Ltd, have a checkered history of abusive and illegal behaviour when it comes to building permits. In a court case against the developer it was found that an Għajnsielem penthouse agreed upon and was not in conformity with Mepa permits.
Another partially-ODZ development in Triq San Blas, Nadur, proposed by the same applicant has also been turned down and an appeal against the decision is due to be heard in October.
In a legal letter to the Environment and Planning Review Tribunal which is set to hear the Marga Valley appeal next month, the architect argues that the existing flooding problems in the valley bottleneck will remain unsolved if the proposal is refused and asks that mitigation measures be carried out.
These would entail keeping culverts open and free from vegetation, placing two manholes in the road, enlarging two existing culverts and adding more drainage holes to cope with water from the valley – especially during storms.
In other words, extensive infrastructural works (to be paid for from public funds) are being requested to help this permit to go through. It remains to be seen how the new Mepa board and the appeals board will treat this cut-and-dry case, and whether a building zone plot should be treated as a green card for development in every case.
The developer claims that the proposed structure is “hydrologically invisible” as the foundations are to be supported on piles, thereby allowing water to flow below the ground slab which would be higher than the site level.
Described as “science fiction” by one source, this attempt at mitigating the hydrological impact seems dubious to say the least, besides being aesthetically problematic.
The question remains: how did a development boundary come to lie in the middle of a valley catchment area?