Caring about landfills

The communications co-ordinator of the Ministry for Resources and Infrastructure claims that Labour is being destructive in its criticism of the new proposed landfills (The Sunday Times, June 2).

On the other hand, Dr Zammit Dimech is presumably being constructive when he keeps reassuring us that the new landfills "will not be like Maghtab landfill".

If some are content with spending millions of liri of taxpayers' money on the proposed new landfills simply because they are presumed to be an improvement on Maghtab, then my criticism is fully justified. The uncontrolled landfill at Maghtab should never have been the yardstick by which Government should base its achievements in landfilling. The accepted yardstick are those international standards on landfilling which Dr Zammit Dimech' s ministry chose to ignore.

Taxpayers want value for money, but the proposed new landfills will be substandard to the worst operating engineered landfills in Europe and the US. This will become evident if the new landfills are based on the unprofessional Project Description Statement issued by Dr Zammit Dimech's ministry which offers nothing more than badly designed landfills that are located in the wrong places.

My criticism has not been directed against a proposal for a new landfill, but against the big cover-up which Dr Zammit Dimech's ministry has orchestrated to hide the unpleasant truth about the inadequacy of the proposed landfills and his ministry's incompetence, which will lead to squandering of a lot of public funds.

On the one hand, Dr Zammit Dimech proclaims that the landfill project will cost countless millions of liri, while assuring us that all will go well because he engaged foreign experts. Even the landfill site has not yet been chosen until an environmental impact assessment (EIA) is carried out.

On the other hand we have the stark reality as presented in the ministry's Project Description Statement (PDS) for the proposed landfills. The PDS leaves many questions unanswered about the landfill's safety and its operation. It also presents a proposed hazardous waste landfill designed by people with no training in landfill design!

The PDS also clearly points to only two localities for landfilling sites, a decision which is immovable because the project timeframe does not envisage the study of alternative sites, whatever the EIA may conclude.

Dr Zammit Dimech is now frantically trying to compensate for his lack of credibility on the proposed landfills by using others to speak for him while basking in the hype of a biased PBS programme, which has been boycotted by Labour.

I am told that this PBS programme even included a short "documentary" about a seemingly idyllic English landfill which concluded with an interview with a local hotel manager who claimed that the landfill had actually improved his hotel business! Maltese hotel owners should now note that according to government propaganda, a landfill next to your hotel is good for your business!

Government and its agents should not expect us to believe such nonsense, let alone expect Labour to participate in such orchestrated and biased TV programmes which jest about people's lives and the health of future generations.

Dr Zammit Dimech has also rallied the support of a handful of so-called "environmentalists" who accuse me of scaremongering on the proposed landfills. My response to these is that now is the time to pro-actively criticise the government's irresponsible proposal. These same complacent "environmentalists" will probably be complaining about the new landfills in a few years' time, when it would be too late for improvements!

Complacency on this issue does not reflect well on our NGOs. Those very few who are blindly clamouring in favour of Government's dangerous landfills while claiming to be friends of the environment and the Earth, should be honest enough to tell us if their motivations may be linked to any commercial interests some of their members may have had in the past with Dr Zammit Dimech's ministry.

The ministry claims that it wants public consultation on the proposed landfills, and then describes any criticism as destructive. I am referring to what the ministry's article described as my "vile attack" on Dr Ciantar, one of the ministry's engineers on the landfills project.

My comments on Dr Ciantar were only in response to his own article in The Sunday Times (May 12). Indeed I never referred to Dr Ciantar before he decided to go public with his particular views on landfills.

Professionals have a moral responsibility to tell the whole truth about an issue in which they claim expertise. They turn vile when they fail to do so. If Dr Ciantar is an expert on landfills, then he is professionally obliged to tell us about the thousands of litres of toxic liquid which leak every year from a standard well-designed engineered landfill.

He also had to warn us that the PDS proposes a hazardous waste landfill which is actually substandard in design. I am not surprised that despite all the presumed "experts", the minister has still not responded to my challenge to tell us who designed the proposed landfills.

The ministry's communication co-ordinator's article goes back decades in time to try to convince us that Labour never cared about the environment. If spending money on the endless commissioned reports can be called doing something for the environment, then perhaps the PN has an advantage over Labour.

However, not all reports are even worth the paper they are printed on. Indeed, the ridiculous report drawn up by the PA in 1997 for the siting of a new landfill (which listed Benghajsa and Ghallis as potential sites), was not heeded by the then Labour government. Now the ministry criticises Labour's wise decision by claiming that we wasted a whole year.

On the other hand, it forgets that Labour's response to the Maghtab landfill problem was immediate. The former Labour Minister for Construction in 1997 had commissioned a report from the University of Bari which offers a solution to the Maghtab landfill on the lines adopted in developed countries.

The PN in government chose to ignore this report and wasted nearly four years until a British company was commissioned only a few weeks ago to draw up another report for a quarter of a million liri of taxpayer's money! All this money will be wasted for an "X-ray" of the Maghtab landfill rather than actually implementing the closure procedure for landfills as indicated in the EU Directive and US regulations.

Labour believes in action, not needless reports and waste of time! Our commitment to the environment is monumental when one considers the short time we had in government. The PN's claim that Labour does not care for the environment because we opened Maghtab landfill in the 1970s is dishonest, because the concept of properly engineered landfills was still unknown at that time. Indeed, it was only in 1999 that the EU drew up its landfills directive establishing engineered landfills.

The real problem today is that Dr Zammit Dimech's ministry refuses to live up to its own commitments and follow the recommendations of the EU Directive and its own Solid Waste Management Strategy. By early 2002, the government was supposed to set up the Recycled Building Materials party (B5 of the Waste Strategy).

Labour has never claimed that all EU Directives do not apply to Malta. Nevertheless, not all EU Directives are the best for Malta because of our special circumstances. For example, the US Federal regulations on hazardous waste landfills are more appropriate for Malta because of local geology, which is the final barrier protecting our groundwater from the landfill contaminants.

However, Dr Zammit Dimech prefers to keep repeating that we do not need any geological studies on the new landfill site because he claims that we already know Malta's geology! His irresponsible presumption contrasts the wisdom of the EU Directive and US regulations which stipulate that a geological report is required for any new landfill site in Europe or America.

Not to be outdone, MEPA also disregarded international procedures for landfilling and failed to ask the landfill developer to produce a geological report so as to safeguard Malta's densely populated territory from landfill pollution. But MEPA has more important priorities than people, so recently it commissioned the Geological Assistance and Services Company from Italy to carry out a Lm40,000 survey on sea grass (alka)!

A Labour government would have to revise the decisions on the proposed landfills because the whole process, from the siting to the design of the landfills, was faulty and immoral. We will not be fooled by a system where a handful of people choose the landfill sites and then the same people are responsible for the EIA process which will confirm their own decisions.

Indeed, the same people who drew up the 1997 report which selected the landfill sites will be the same people running the EIA process, which will undoubtedly confirm these sites!

Mr Mizzi is the Opposition's spokesman on the environment.