As you read this, some of your tax money is stealing its way into the pockets of an army of consultants that has been commissioned to shortlist places around the coast where land reclamation could take place.

Partly this is because the building industry has run out of room where to dump the by-product of its extended rampage. It is not enough that we have to put up with constant noise, dust, smashed-up road surfaces and the rest. Now we are even having to pay money to help the industry solve the problems it creates.

It is not just places where to dump that the industry has run out of. It also needs fresh pastures where to build, ideally in prime locations with good seaviews and no annoying neighbours and heritage issues to have to deal with. Thus the studies on where best to make new land, which means that your tax money is also feeding land-hungry and speculative development.

Until very recently, land reclamation was a possibility. Now, we’re told that the Environment and Resources Authority (ERA) has been instructed to select the most promising sites. The sleight of hand’s done. It’s no longer a matter of if, but where.

I do not blame the people at ERA. They have been given a task that they must carry out, because they are directly answerable to a government that has decided, in as many words, that land reclamation will happen. The rest of us have no such constraints. As far as we’re concerned, to insist on asking the ‘if’ question is to refuse to be conditioned by a manipulative State.

The bearers of the good news will advise us to admire the splendours of land reclamation elsewhere. They will mention places like Mumbai and Monaco, where some of the world’s most expensive real estate sits on reclaimed land. It turns out neither is a particularly heartwarming prospect.

Take Mumbai. When Portuguese Bombaim was passed on to the English in 1661 as part of Catherine of Braganza’s dowry, the place was indeed little more than seven small islands and the odd fort. What followed was a history of land fill and tetrapods, and today Mumbai is a peninsula inhabited by over 20 million people. One of the reclaimed spots has so many beautiful art deco buildings that it is called the ‘Miami of the East’. So, success, then?

Not entirely. Deco or no deco, Mumbai is in many ways an environmental catastrophe. Partly because reclamation is literally geographical brinkmanship, the city has nowhere to put its waste. The sea around much of Mumbai is turgid, toxic and untouchable. Millions of people, including the native Koli fishing communities, live on the swampy margins left over by reclamation and put up with things like diarrhoea, malaria and early death.

Land reclamation is a disaster in the making, and no amount of specialist studies can do anything to change it

That’s India, but how about Monaco? Surely land reclamation there is a racing success? Yes, if by success we mean the number of Ferraris per square inch and land prices as high as several tens of thousands of euros per square metre. Monaco is a playground for the super-rich, and the bits of the city that are reclaimed simply make it a bigger playground for the super-rich. They don’t make it a more liveable place generally. The history of land gifts to the Tumas and Corinthia groups, and of the 5,700 jobs at Smart City that became 5,700 apartments, is well known. As in Monaco, the case for reclaiming land in Pembroke or Xgħajra is pretty straightforward if you’re in the habit of developing, buying or selling million-euro apartments. The argument is somewhat flimsier if you aren’t.

That there are many more people who aren’t millionaires in Malta than in Monaco means that a much smaller fraction of the population stands to benefit from land reclamation. Most of us have nothing to gain but a view of high-cost high-rise. And, if you think that the not-so-rich will benefit from trickle-down, try being not-so-rich in Monaco.

Back to Mumbai, I don’t think land reclamation in Malta will cause diarrhoea and early deaths. It will, however, bring about a general environmental degradation, in very many ways.

The sea’s a good place to start. A couple of square kilometres of lost sea may seem insignificant compared to the vastness of the rest. Except land reclamation does not impact the sea generically – it impacts the coast, of which we have not that many kilometres. What marine biologists call ‘littoral communities’ are incredibly rich assemblages of animals, plants and algae. I don’t expect the Sandros and Silvios to care, but I do.

Algae aside, there are many people who care very much about the aesthetics of the coast, and the quality of the water they swim in. I doubt their experience will be enriched by the artificial islands, the new forests of high-rise, and the currents of construction muck.

The problem has as much to do with the land as with the sea. The Prime Minister has said that one of the advantages of land reclamation is that it will soak up the vast amounts of rock expected to be excavated in the building of the Malta-Gozo tunnel. Sounds like a neat solution – a bit like enjoying beef and using the inedible bits to line car seats and make shoes and handbags.

In practice, though, this will mean several years of noise, dust, trucks and heavy machinery along the coastal route. If the excavated rock is transported by sea, we will have to live with a constant procession of barges which, if the experience of fish farms is anything to go by, will spill rock and dust no matter how solemn ERA’s promises.

This, rather than fantastical artists’ impressions of tree-lined promenades, is the reality of land reclamation. It’s a disaster in the making, and no amount of specialist studies can do anything to change it.

mafalzon@hotmail.com