Leisure activities should be introduced at a quarry in Wied Ghomor instead of the old people’s home being proposed, environment non-government organisation Nature Trust said this afternoon.

The organisation expressed concern about the pending application and pointed out that the area was outside development zone. The package deal being presented - that of landscaping and quarry restoration for the building of a retirement home - was not conducive to good planning practices and resonated with blackmail, it said. 

Nature Trust said it did not object to quarry restoration but any development would create a serious precedent.

Wied Ghomor lies in the north harbour district, Malta’s most populated region (29 per cent).

Nature Trust deplored the fact that the developer had a pending application to extend the quarry and that this was still pending in spite of it being recommended for refusal.

It posed a questions: should the development application not be given the go ahead, did the developer hope to resume quarrying in an area which had since been encroached by high quality development?

This valley system, Nature Trust said, had been scheduled by the Malta Environment and Planning Authority as an Area of Ecological Importance and Site of Scientific Importance.  Given that this valley was the last extensive open system in an overpopulated region, Nature Trust said a sustainable alternative would be that parts of it would be used for adventure leisure activities such as rock-climbing, abseiling and zip lines.

The remaining parts, it said, should be restored as per PA policies.