Editorial

The answer to the question if we are going to go on building for ever in Malta is definitely "no". There will soon be no more land to build on, and no Maltese stone to build with.

There we have two sources of our worry. Quarrying has hewn huge holes in our land, destroying or threatening ancient caves, in some cases, disrupting watercourses in others while exposing huge and ugly wounds in the countryside.

We still have not found extensive use for disused quarries and there does not seem to be a general policy for the rehabilitation of such areas.

True, some private individuals have done things with quarries, like turning them into gardens or orchards, and maybe part-reservoirs, but most of them are privately owned and the government has not yet found either enough persuasive power to talk with, or intelligent ideas to enforce.

Meanwhile, Adrian Mallia, co-author of the report 'State of the Environment Report for Malta 2002', published by the government a few days ago, said the building industry needed a "big rethink".

His idea is that to deter more construction in an already overly built-up country the price of Maltese stone should be raised. The report warns of over-quarrying. And quarrying, it recommends, should restructure itself if it is to be run on more environmentally sustainable lines.

What compounds the damage and harm is, in the writer's words, that "there is sadly a lack of compliance in the quarrying industry - from dust, noise, and over-excavation, down to the lack of real restoration."

A survey of quarry boundaries made in 2000 for the PA to establish the area and depth of quarrying at each licensed quarry site, showed that "the vast majority of quarries were operating outside their quarry boundaries or were exceeding their permitted depths".

The report warns that new quarries and extensions to existing quarries, a considerable number of which were undertaken illegally, have affected significant areas of former agricultural land. Very little can be done about this, as disused quarries have not been reclaimed, and in any case, agricultural land cannot always be easily replaced with newly created fields.

Mr Mallia suggests the obvious - to which we have been blinkered by our illogical enchantment with Maltese stone, thinking that we can go on taking it up without noticing the emptiness.

His idea is that we start to import certain building material, such as granite for special conrete works and for the roads.

A problem we must do something about is the urban sprawl, by which towns and villages are joining up without so much as a green belt in between.

Is it wise to go on building on more land so many villa-type constructions? High-rise homes may be unpopular, but how about using them for offices, hotels, and similar services?

We may not like it, but up is the only way to go, apart from the little land-reclamation from the sea that we shall perhaps one day engage in when disposing of our heavy inanimate material.

Even when deciding to go up, great care would have to be taken to ensure that such development is restricted to new, or relatively new, areas so as to preserve the character of the few old places that we still have.