It may be a case of leapfrog for Gozo's own waste mountain overlying the tourist resort of Marsalforn. Smaller and less volatile, the dump at Il-Qortin could see transformation into a recreational area before a similar public park planned for Magħtab is fit to receive its first visitors.

Mushrooming on Gozo's north coast, with rubbish spilling over the cliff onto boulder scree below, the tip was shut down in 2004. The Government was forced to declare the dump in Xagħra's backyard officially closed to avoid being penalised under by the EU landfill directive.

A dragon of a lesser degree compared to Magħtab, the Gozo dumpsite contains a smaller fraction of industrial waste. It is higher in organic matter, causing spontaneous burning of methane produced by decay, but most of the gas has already been burnt off in a number of fires on the site.

Test results have yet to confirm whether energy can be produced from biogas released at the Il-Qortin site but it is not expected to be present in useful quantities. However, the area is still contaminated and will need some intervention before it is safe for families to wander around on its slopes. Wasteserv suspects lingering gas emissions and is likely to decide that digging of some wells to collect and treat the gases is still needed.

Making it secure for the public meant clawing 60,000 cubic metres of dumped material back from the cliff edge, which was thought to be in danger of collapse. The main concern was that much of the landfill was resting too close to the edge with a risk of falling onto lower levels and contaminating the underlying coastline with waste.

It took two months to shift the waste to a safer position. More material was brought in to shape it to the most stable design while care was taken not to cover the last of archeological remains partially buried at the dump.

The ridge between Ramla Bay and Marsalforn Bay is rich in archeological features. Somehow, some of these features still survive despite years of dumping. Expansion of the landfill's footprint was restricted to avoid any damage to remaining features. An upcoming study on these will finally secure a place for the archeological remnants and make them part of a protected heritage trail.

Requests to introduce sports features, such as a track for model car racing and a football pitch, are among proposals received during meetings held with the public in Gozo. A camp site on the wish list of a school in the Ekoskola network is also being floated. These and other suggestions have been passed on to the Malta Environment and Planning Authority by Wasteserv for further consideration within the final design.

Concerned Xagħra residents were told that an open air drive-in cinema planned for the park would not pose a noise problem as each car would have its own sound point.

Apart from the six-metre high screen, the whole area would be low lit and not expected to cause adverse light pollution. A discussion on whether the PV panels would turn out to be a reflective eyesore at view points on land or sea was met by a suggestion that tree planting could help reduce the glare.

A reservoir to collect stormwater will ease flood problems in Marsalforn and provide some irrigation water for park landscaping.

Solar electricity from 2,000 photovoltaic panels will be exported from the site and fed into the national grid. Energy from the PV panels will be transmitted at high tension to avoid losses.

Less certain for the park are the proposed wind turbines. As long as Mepa remains stuck on aesthetic obstacles, the chances of obtaining a permit are sketchy for any such land-based windfarms across the Maltese Islands.

This month the project description statement (PDS) goes to Mepa with points of concern voiced at the public consultation meetings.

Paving paradise takes on another guise in Xlendi. The tourism authority is trying to bring back what a two-metre widening of the promenade in the early 1990s finally took away.

Sediment rushing down the valley together with an underwater reservoir of sand once kept the beach at Xlendi inlet in a state of natural equilibrium. Pumping sand from the seabed is not a sustainable option. Putting back cobbles removed in the mid-fifties while relying on the bay's store of natural sand to do the rest seemed a plausible idea.

But this option, preferred in the PDS, to bring back the natural beach of 50 years ago using materials on site has been ditched in favour of yet another quarry grit beach. Samples dug up from the car park at Xlendi show that while some of the old beach material is still there it is not considered worth tearing up the car park to get at it.

An ashtray beach straight out of a quarry in Jordan may have gone down well at St George's Bay, lapping at Paceville's back doorstep. But it seems a shame to pollute dear little Xlendi in this way. Environmental consultants concede that burying inner parts of the bay with alien imported geological material will add up to a major impact.

One favourable aspect of the project is the planned capture and re-routing of stormwater run-off. The consultants have called for replacement of the present sewerage system with a sealed pressurised main and standby generation equipment to prevent sewage overflowing into the Xlendi Bay during power blackouts.