The chairman of the planning authority has been ordered by the Speaker of Parliament to attend the next meeting of the select committee discussing the black dust issue, after the authority failed to nominate technical officials to attend yesterday’s session.
Also instructed to turn up were the permanent secretary of the Ministry for the Environment and the director of Mepa’s environment directorate.
The order was issued after opposition spokesman on the environment Leo Brincat said it was unacceptable for the regulator to fail to send its representatives after having been invited to do so by Speaker Micheal Frendo.
The select committee’s secretary told its members that before the sitting she had been informed by the planning authority that they had not yet nominated a person to attend.
The three officials to attend next time were suggested by Nationalist MP Jesmond Mugliett.
The committee was formed last year to look into the problem of black dust in the air that has for years plagued residents of Fgura and surrounding towns.
A study by Mepa last year pointed to the Marsa power station as being the most likely culprit but Enemalta Corporation insists this is not the case.
At yesterday’s meeting, Enemalta technical officers explained that boilers 3, 4 and 5 at the Marsa power station and the two boilers at Delimara did not have precipitators while boilers 6, 7 and 8 at Marsa had precipitators because they had previously been using coal.
Chief technical officer Peter Grima said Enemalta used filters, the quality of fuel and control of combustions to contain fly ash, which had previously been disposed of in disused quarries and also sold to private contractors for mixing with concrete. This was discontinued on the insistence of Mepa officials and for a time, Enemalta collected fly ash in its silos. This was now being exported to Italy and Spain.
Enemalta had been monitoring emissions since the early 1990s but the systems used were not very reliable. Better monitoring started in early 2000. Readings were documented.
Mr Grima said the samples analysed had too low a content of nickel and vanadium to link these particles to the dust emitting from the power station.
He said the heavy fuel oil used contained some amounts of these chemicals but the minimal amount found in the samples showed that the content from Enemalta was inexistent or at least minimal.
Soot was blown out of the power plants by Enemalta every day but the corporation adopted measures which ensured that emissions were in line with EU directives and accepted levels. Most of the dust fell out at sea, Mr Grima said.
Epidemiologist Professor Raymond Agius, an expert in occupational and environmental medicine, made a presentation on black dust and health based on the documents supplied to him by the committee. Prof. Agius served as an expert on a number of UK-government appointed panels on air quality standards.
He said the dust particles that were so tiny as to seem invisible were more dangerous to health.
Information on air pollution has been gathered by Mepa for the last few years compared to having been continuously gathered for the last 40 years in the UK.
The dust in Malta, said Prof. Agius, included salt, sand and a concentration of sulphur dioxide.