Carmel Cacopardo, an Alternattiva Demokratika candidate who used to work at the Mepa audit office today published the Mepa preliminary audit report into the redevelopment of the Sant’ Antnin waste recycling plant in Marsascala.

Party leader Harry Vassallo said it was shameful that Mepa, which was there to protect the community, had not published the report.

The report was drawn up by Mr Cacopardo at the request of the Mepa auditor. Mr Cacopardo said he was publishing it in the interests of the community and because the institutions had failed their duty to keep society informed on matters of public interest.

The main points of the report are that:

No serious effort was made to identify an alternative site for the waste recycling plant;
Studies which were required as part of Environment Impact Assessments were not carried out, including an odour impact assessment;
At the time when the development application was being considered, meetings were held between the Environment Minister and those people who were processing the application, something which, Mr Cacopardo said, gave the impression of political interference.

Mr Cacopardo said these goings on underlined the need to separate the environment protection and development planning roles of Mepa and that it should be a Parliamentary select committee which should have the final say on appointments to the Mepa board. Local referenda should also be held when major projects were located in their localities.

The government in a reaction to Mr Cacopardo’s press conference said the AD candidate had only published a preliminary report he himself had written when he was employed within the Mepa audit office.

The Environment Ministry pointed out that the Audit Officer himself had objected to the publication of the report since it was not complete and needed to be revised in view of developments.

Furthermore, Mr Cacopardo’s own report concluded that:“it is unlikely that at the end of the day any substantially different decision could have been arrived relative to the Sant’Antnin project.”

As to the environment minister’s presence at meetings, the ministry pointed out that this was a government project and one culd not conclude that the government had been given preferential treatment by Mepa since the development application took five months to be approved.

The ministry referred to comments by the Ombudsman yesterday and by the Mepa audit officer earlier and said Mr Cacopardo’s actions were a blatant violation of ethics and his actions were motivated by political reasons, especially since he had had the report for over a year but had published it now, during an election campaign..