On the evening I visited the valley in Mellieħa, a rainbow shone over the Aħrax cliffs across the bay. A whispering grove of tall pines offers sanctuary there where no hunter dares to enter. Oblivious to the encroaching villas, a single farmer labours near the flowing water and turtle doves settle for the night.

"How can Catherine Galea, deputy chairman of the Malta Environment and Planning Authority Board, apply to build villas in a valley when her duty is to protect the environment?" asked a Santa Maria Estate resident rather innocently.

It is not such a big thing to have a permit granted for a development application after it was recommended for refusal. There are all kinds of valid reasons why the recommendations of a case officer might be overturned. But if you are the deputy chairman of Mepa, and at the same time the architect (also the applicant) for a plot where part of a road has collapsed into a valley, then it is a big thing.

For the disgraced architect of the Triq il-Pont debacle in the valley of Għajn Żejtuna, resignation was the only acceptable course of action.

The wall came tumbling down when half of Triq il-Pont collapsed into the watercourse in a landslide reminiscent of a similar episode involving her biggest client - the mudslide on the St Paul's Bay bypass where illegal development was taking place. The incident was followed by the awarding of a contract to rebuild the entire bypass, including the mudslide repair works, to a business partner of Charles Polidano, the nation's most powerful developer.

The ex-deputy chairman is not the only development spilling across the valley's protective boundary, laid out in the approved northwest local plan. Flattening everything in their way, other transgressors downstream have lined up over the years to crush the remains of the valley. At this rate the watercourse clothed in greenery will become a dull concrete gully - denatured and rushing madly to find solace in the sea.

Villas with underlying basements and pool decks have been eating away at the valley edge for years. An infringement was lifted when unpermitted excavations in clay soil under the same architect at a second plot were sanctioned. Downstream from this spot another development was sanctioned, involving an additional basement level, under enforcement orders.

Looking across the sea to where the rainbow ended in a pot of gold, I was reminded of other applications and infringements at Aħrax tal-Mellieħa.

An infringement on agricultural land near the clifftop garigue was overtaken by an application to sanction rooms "built by the government". The architect in this case is well known for his outside development zone (ODZ) applications which start out as a "tool room".

An application to build a reservoir was initially refused in this area which forms part of the buffer zone to an ecologically important area. A few years later a refusal to permit an "overlying agricultural store on existing reservoir" was overturned in an application under the architect whom we shall refer to as 'Charlie'.

Next door to Charlie, Ms Galea managed to get a refusal overturned in the case of a similar application for "reservoir, pump room and small agricultural store" which was shifted to a much bigger area than the original one.

Sanctioning in this manner and overturned refusals are causing an unstoppable haemorrhage of construction in the countryside. Another architect whom we shall call 'Bobby' is linked to a string of cases that were sanctioned or had their permits upheld despite the case officer's recommended refusal, notably in fields at Tal-Providenza, Siġġiewi.

Due to their political connections, Charlie and Bobby are two names that jump off the page in the long list of architects engaged in sanctioning and ODZ applications. The promise of more transparency at Mepa is a good thing but not if the authority continues to rely on public intervention to do its job of protecting the environment from abusive development while the environment section is too weak to effectively regulate the developer side of Mepa.

Another ODZ development threatens in fields at the Għadira end of Mellieħa bypass, where rural heritage takes the form of an old donkey-driven water mill. A planned 340-room hotel extension on 10 levels will mean the loss of good quality agricultural land, a major negative impact which according to consultants is impossible to mitigate.

The area behind the Seabank Hotel which stands to be affected by the proposal has a high concentration of old stone irrigation channels. Some of the rubble walls here are classified Grade A which deserve to be preserved with a 100-metre buffer zone. Consultants commissioned to give their opinion on the project consider the loss of cultural heritage features resulting from the scheme to be of "major significance."

Olive, citrus, peach, pomegranate, almond and pistachio trees are recorded within the extension's footprint. The developer's argument is that these do not form part of a natural habitat and can be replanted elsewhere. Parsley, carrots, celery, potatoes, tomatoes, artichokes, onions and carrots are also grown here.

The fertile fields are Class 1 quality and the availability of irrigation water gives the area additional standing making it worthy of preservation. The quality of the Environment Impact Assessment needs to be closely monitored.