The latest two documents issued by the Ministry of Environment and MEPA have the politically-barbed titles “For an Efficient Planning System” and “Towards High Standards for the Environment.” They are intended to regularise the Great Divorce between Development and Planning and Environment, granting each component freedom of action in its own particular sphere. Of course, the fact that nowhere on this planet can Development & Planning and Environment keep their spheres of action free of significant overlap has been ignored. Inevitably there is much rhetoric from each side on taking care of its patch while remaining open to the “parameters” of the other side. But looking at recent history of such interactions, it is clear that development and planning have always had the upper hand. Its acolytes have always had a fairly precise vision of what they wanted, have always been far more numerous than “environmentalists” and much better placed in the local power structure. As a result, they have been able to command great financial resources. The value of this last “parameter” has hardly ever been better demonstrated than in these last 15 months.
Up to this point in time we have had:
1. A Ministry of the Environment, Sustainable Development & Climate Change, without a still-undivided MEPA.
2. MEPA under a PS in the Office of the PM, with a hyper-active Planning Division whose major concern seems to be to deliver on (non-public) pre-electoral promises made to the development lobby.
The result has been a stream of part-plans for development in and out of present Development Zones; delivery of commitments to various lobbies, including the hunting lobby; modification of Development Zones to suit particular “tastes”, while riding on the back of the Hon. George Pullicino’s 2006 Rationalisation Scheme. And this while the revision of the 1990 Strategic Plan was supposed to be coming to the boil. Surely a taste of things to come: the Environment Minister Leo Brincat has just said he was not consulted on the revised ODZ Policy. All the same “we would be strongly objecting to situations that could (sic) arise where the parameters are bypassed”. Now who would want to “bypass” “the parameters” I wonder? And what tools would Environment have to deliver these strong objections? In the Divorce settlement, the status of an obligatory consultee, a seat on the Planning Board (alongside the usual token seat for e-NGOs) and the provision that the
Nothing better than a pea-shooter. This is not just idle prognostication. Minister Brincat is in a similar situation right now over what he describes as “a racket”, destructive of his efforts to improve waste separation at source, among some of the waste contractors hired by Local Councils. The latter do not fall under his remit, as he pointed out when a suggestion that a food waste collection scheme proposed by the LCs ran counter to the wider national needs. So what can he do other than rail impotently? What’s more the “lobbies” behind the Planning Board carry far more weight than the waste contractors.
To return to the present: the complaints of e-NGOs led to a brief, and rather scrappy SPED put out by MEPA, simply the latest demonstration of a habit of hasty reaction by PS Farrugia when caught with his pants down. The great Polidano crusade was another such response, designed to take the wind out of the then-impending e-NGO demonstration. What was the overall gain for “the environment” and the much-vaunted new “enforcement climate” at the end of the now defunct performance? Essentially nothing.
There is a list of other recent examples of MEPA “interaction” with other “stakeholders”. The reversal – no reasons given – of the TM traffic impact assessment for the Mistra Towers project, with its possible repercussions on a valuable supply of low-salinity ground water. The Ministry for Energy and Water Conservation said not a public word. The reversals of objections by heritage bodies (MEPA’s or national) to construction close to Tal-Hagrat Temple (Mgarr) and to illegal paving in the buffer zone of the Xaghra Circle in Gozo.
Two decisions benefitting Gaffarena followed, both of them giant steps Toward Higher Standards for the Environment. The first and more publicised one is the permission to break the bonds of the Qormi petrol station, admittedly made possible by feeble enforcement by the former MEPA board. But given that Gaffarena had broken most of the rules in the MEPA book, one would have thought that the present board would have been ashamed to waive the restrictions; mind you the station was in the stamping ground of powerful political figures who may have been impressed by Gaffarena’s plea on behalf of his numerous offspring.
But that plea (of poverty) has now come under another light. For Gaffarena has applied to develop 33 warehouses on ODZ land near Hal-Kirkop (not an agritourism project, mind you!). The proposal, in modified form, has a rosary of refusals on almost every ground under the old MEPA sun. Until 2012 the land, still classified as agricultural land, was occupied by a farmer. It lies on the groundwater protection zone and partly on a listed archaeology buffer zone. That did not prevent MEPA from accepting a “new” application, even going as far as empting the applicant from an EIA because an applicant-supplied PDS provides sufficient information! In any case the project is not deemed to have any significant environmental effect and Gaffarena is proposing to seal the whole site (5500m2) with concrete flooring and to build a rainwater reservoir!
Have Ministers Leo Brincat and Minister Konrad Mizzi been consulted or even merely informed re this proposal? But then no one is bound to do so until the Great Divorce Document is signed seal and delivered. But it certainly looks as if it will indeed deliver a “more efficient planning system” for some at least.
Friends of the Earth Malta