The Marsaxlokk local council has appealed against the planning authority's permit for the power station extension because it feels it makes no sense to approve the building before a decision is taken on how it will operate.
In a letter to the Malta Environment and Planning Authority Appeals Board, architect Edric Micallef, who is also the locality's deputy mayor, argued the permit should be revoked until the environmental permit is granted.
He argued it made no sense for the authority to have approved the building of the power station extension when no decision had yet been taken on the fuel the power station would use.
Mr Micallef said that during the consideration of the permit application, it was repeatedly stressed that what was under discussion was the structure of the power station, not the way it would operate.
However, the authority had approved the development of a building based on the use of heavy fuel oil. In so doing, the authority had prejudiced the choice of fuel when this was meant to be the subject of an integrated pollution prevention and control (IPPC) permit, he said in his letter to the appeals board sent last Thursday.
He said should the use of heavy fuel be rejected, Mepa would have approved a building which would have no use. Moreover, he said, various grievances the council had raised during the permit's consideration, including the height of the chimneys, noise levels and emissions, had remained unanswered, undermining the consultation process.
Mr Micallef said a board member who raised questions on the height of the chimneys was "misguided" when the Mepa chairman said this was a decision that would come out of the environmental permit.
He said according to a permit condition, structural amendments would have to be made according to the outcome of the environmental permit process.
The permit was granted during a tense meeting on May 20. During this meeting, Mepa chairman Austin Walker said the decision did not concern the power station's operational aspects because these would be dealt with when the environmental permit (IPPC) was discussed in about a year's time. He said issues such as the choice of fuel, waste disposal and mitigation measures to prevent environmental problems created by the discharge of hot water into the sea were not considerations the board had to deliberate on during the meeting.