Avoiding flooding at Burmarrad

While applauding Alan Deidun, your regular correspondent on environmental issues, I do wish that his approach to various topics would not be quite so bombastic before he had carried our a reasoned approach to his subjects.

I was seriously interested, and wrote about various environmental issues 25 or more years ago and as a resident of Salina Bay I was somewhat concerned about flooding in the area.

After the catastrophic rains in 1979, where a visitor lost her life near the Mtarfa roundabout and was washed into the sea at Salina Bay, I researched the area and found that once Chadwick Lakes had filled and flooded down Qlejgha valley, Ta' l-Isperanza valley and Wied il-Ghasel to join up with Ghajn Rihana and its already broken dams at the hump-back bridge on the Burmarrad/Naxxar Road, the water simply flooded across the farmland at Burmarrad, being joined by water from Wied Qannott which flows down Wardija valley into the Burmarrad plain in an entirely undredged watercourse near the large supermarket.

I found that the dams in Wied Qannott were all breached, and later had a site meeting with officials from the relevant ministry. I also found in Wied il-Ghasel evidence, some three metres down, of enormous Roman building blocks marking what would appear to be the probable remains of a Roman harbour convenient to the olive oil and farm complex at San Pawl Milqi. This, the site of the watercourse (marked as such on the old Ordnance Survey maps) is now given over to grapes, so any serious water flows will not have a cut channel to the sea at the recently dredged Port Burmarrad.

Thirty-three years ago Port Burmarrad was as it is today and a trickle of water was still flowing round the five-metre ditch bordering the saltpans and coast road (Triq il-Kosta).

That vital ditch was allowed to silt up. Port Burmarrad also silted up, not as a friendly salt marsh, but after many long-term sewage overflows, as a totally stinking mess of accumulated rubbish from the fields of Burmarrad, great masses of sea-grass and of course sewage. The smell was often foul. We could no longer swim in safety, and the swarms of mosquitoes had to be seen to be believed.

Dredging has been done and we have got rid of the smell, the sewage and other debris, temporarily. If the ditch is not dredged as well Port Burmarrad will silt up once more, unless an angled breakwater is constructed at the mouth of the port (see the Paul M. Laferla plans for the area).

Engineers have done a great job rehabilitating the watercourse and reconstructing the dams in Ghajn Rihana. (I have no idea what's been happening in Wied il-Kbir which comes into the Marsa area). We are given to understand that the next phase will be to open up the watercourse from the coast road, across the plain of Burmarrad to link up with Ghajn Rihana and Wied il-Ghasel, thereby stopping Burmarrad from flooding and losing hundreds of tonnes of soil as it is washed into the sea at Salina.

I would have thought Mr Deidun could have taken interest in the saltpans, and the breached sea wall at Port Burmarrad which blew out during last year's floods when the blocked waterway allowed the entire saltpans to flood to a most considerable depth. The saltpans are not being repaired, although the press carried articles claiming a two-year reconstruction phase. These are the largest, most commercially viable saltpans on the islands.

I would have thought Mr Deidun could have highlighted the fact that the fougasse at the mouth of Port Burmarrad on the St Paul's side has been hidden, or built over, by one of the summer 'bungalow' owners.

I would have thought that Mr Deidun would have made much of the fact that the incredibly old, and constantly flowing spring of fresh water, ending in a three-metre wide pool before emptying into Port Burmarrad some 40 metres before the boathouses below Triq Ta' Xtut has been totally covered with debris thrown up when the main sewer was dug.

I appreciate how much good Mr Deidun actually does but would have been much happier if he had left the bungalow at Gebel Ghawzra (DCC93-01/04, PA 2573?03) to take its natural course (which will keep illegal hunters off this pristine private land) and had done a follow-up on the illegally constructed (too high and too close to the road) house in Triq Sagra Familja, Bidnija, which he surely featured once, but, the combination of an influential owner and an even more influential architect seems to have left quite a few of the thoroughly annoyed local residents tongue-tied as well.