Mepa and our trees
My association was asked to intervene after a majestic exemplar of a ficus tree was removed from L-Iklin as part of a project undertaken by the local council. This occurred after questions made by a citizen in a letter dated November 9 and published in...
My association was asked to intervene after a majestic exemplar of a ficus tree was removed from L-Iklin as part of a project undertaken by the local council. This occurred after questions made by a citizen in a letter dated November 9 and published in The Times were ignored by both Mepa and the local council.
Mepa responded promptly to our queries giving us important information. The local council had applied for a development permit to create a small car park and some landscaping. Mepa granted this permit on condition that this particular tree was not to be removed. And, yet, the local council asked the Environmental Landscaping Consortium (ELC) to remove the tree.
Our letter to the local council was ignored for a month and our association was only invited to meet the mayor after the provisions of the public service directive were invoked.
This meeting was very cordial, however, the reasons given to us for the uprooting ranged from claiming that the local council had ignored the condition as an oversight to claiming that the tree was uprooted to protect a newly-discovered water cistern.
The most disquieting thing, however, is something else entirely. For this uprooting, Mepa fined the local council €400. Yet, it transpired that the project in question has benefited from €14,400, originating from Mepa’s Urban Improvement Fund.
Is it possible that there was no coordination between this Mepa fund and its Planning Directorate? Should not the whole project have been blocked the moment the local council breached the permit conditions? Does not a €14,400 grant make a mockery of the fine?
As things stand, has not Mepa now shown other local councils how to sidestep the law and get away with this?
As an additional consideration, why didn’t the ELC too need Mepa’s authorisation to remove this tree? Why should the ELC, or whoever is contracted to perform such works, need just a request by a local council to uproot any tree on public land?
When L-Iklin first sprouted, one could easily predict that the number of residents’ cars would be increasing exponentially. The lack of green spaces and parking facilities at the planning stage is baffling. Surely one expects much better town planning for these very real needs.