The Marsaxlokk council has appealed to the government to revise its position on the technology to be installed at the Delimara power station extension for the sake of the health of its residents and those in nearby villages.

In a statement, the council said it was not against the extension but against the prototype technology being used.

The council said that Marsaxlokk residents were to be used as guinea pigs for experiments.

In a country as small as Malta, where such a plant has to be close to a residential area, it was not acceptable to take experimental risks with untried and untested technology.

The government, which supposedly had the duty to protect the health of its people, was permitting that the people become exposed to experiments with their health.

There was no plausible excuse for the matter to continue. The government’s lack of planning could not be used as an excuse that there was no time to lose, going ahead with the project to the detriment of the people.

Even the auditor general criticised the undue haste with which the contract was signed.

The council noted that although the Prime Minister spoke on Vision 2015 as the year by when the country had to reach a level of excellence, with its behaviour, the government was excluding the south from this level by accepting a technology which was far away from what could be considered excellent.

It was accepting a plant which worked on heavy fuel oil and because of this, abatement equipment had to be installed. The plant was to create 30 tonnes of bottom ash and three tonnes of oil sludge daily.

Although the plant had already been ordered, there still were no concrete plans on what was to be become of this bottom ash, where it was to be stored, how it was to be carried and where it was to be taken.

This could be seen from the AG’s report which indicated that Enemalta’s chief technical officer gave the wrong information at a public hearing in January.

The council condemned this behaviour and said this was the same person who in April last year had said in Marsaxlokk square that the existent power station did not need filters.

On the incineration proposal for the oil sludge, the council said WasteServ operated Malta’s sole incinerator and it still had not confirmed whether it was willing to accept this sludge for this incinerator, which was in Marsa.

An alternative was for an incinerator to be built at Delimara, near the power station, with the excuse that waste would be used to create energy when the real reason would be to burn this sludge. Another was that the sludge would be burnt in the Phase 1 boilers. Both these alternatives would leave more emissions in the air of the area.

All this could be avoided with a power station that worked on cleaner fuel, the council said.