In his contribution titled What Lies Underneath (March 26), Adrian Mifsud refers to the proposed excavation adjacent to St John's Co-Cathedral and concludes that geological problems (which I had reported) can be mitigated by the great "advances in geotechnics... which allow excavations to be carried out safely". He tries to substantiate his statement with examples drawn from the successful deep excavation adjacent to the Big Ben clock tower in London and by contributions to this newspaper by architects Alex Torpiano and Andrè Zammit.
Mr Mifsud is misinformed about all his examples. As lecturer in geotechnics at the University of Malta, he should know that the Big Ben was constructed on a three-metre-thick concrete raft foundation which maintains the integrity of the clock tower even if a void is excavated next to it. St John's Co-Cathedral (of greater artistic value and older than the Big Ben) is not built on such a raft and remains highly vulnerable to excavation, differential settlement and collapse by wedge failure.
Likewise, the two local architects mentioned by Mr Mifsud are inappropriate as examples of application of geotechnics since they repeatedly overlook problems of geology and thereby unnecessarily increase the risk of failure.
Indeed, Prof. Torpiano, who is Dean at the Faculty of the Built Environment, had publicly declared his personal contentious philosophy that "things can be done, irrespective of the geology" (February 27). This explains why the feats of engineering in London and elsewhere would be impossible to achieve in Malta. The realistic yardstick for local geotechnics would not be the excavation next to the Big Ben as suggested by Mr Mifsud, but Malta's roads constructed "irrespective of the geology", as anyone can attest by their substandard quality.
Mr Zammit's contribution (February 19) follows the same unacceptable philosophy and proposes the excavation of a "tunnel under St John Street linking the Sliema and the Senglea Ferries" which he claims would be "cut through globigerina limestone like butter and next to no vibrations". A study of underground geology would show that a significant length of his proposed tunnel would not be in Globigerina limestone and that the precarious cavernous geology (on which Prof. Torpiano designed high-rise buildings in Tigné) and cryptic faults in some areas would make tunnelling look like cutting through apple crumble rather than butter.
The worthiness of advances in geotechnics and their effectiveness in local projects are as good as our knowledge of construction site geology, which is not determined simply by just a few inadequately interpreted cores, as some would want us to believe.
The St John's project could have been an excellent trigger for a change in local mindset, so that we do not have to repeat the same mistakes in the future. Regrettably, change has not happened because the project was mired by futile power struggles and recriminations which engulfed many, including Mr Mifsud who prefers to blame people who oppose proposed projects, and characterises these people as being in a permanent "state of hysteria". He also blames the building contractors whom he calls "roughshod". Would he also blame taxpayers for speaking out when burdened with up to double the projected cost of tunnelling or excavation because planners and designers unanticipated geological problems (as happened to many projects) simply because the prevailing local philosophy is that a detailed geological survey is redundant?
Ultimately, the key to progress is change brought by education and research in Malta's geology as Mr Mifsud rightly suggested. However, geology and its long-standing scientific and engineering applications remain conspicuously absent from the wide-ranging curriculum of studies found at Malta's highest educational institution.
What lies underneath this absence (for which the country pays a high price) are a few local professors who oppose change and presume they can usurp the professional input of geologists and replace it with their own mistaken notions and followers.
Meanwhile, taxpayers continue to endure poor road quality, unsafe excavations, unacceptable settlement of buildings and poor quality aggregate (a geological resource and fundamental ingredient in concrete and road making), because the philosophy emanating from the University of Malta is that all these "things can be done, irrespective of the geology".
The public may want to know what the University is doing about this and who is accountable?