Moviment Graffitti has filed an appeal against the approval of a large fuel station outside the development zone in Burmarrad, the environmental group said on Tuesday.
The Planning Authority last April approved the ‘relocation’ of a small kerbside pump to around 3,700 square metres of agricultural land off Triq Burmarrrad, in a development including a car park and retail outlet.
Only around 1,700 square metres of the site will be built up, with the rest landscaped.
In a statement, Moviment Graffitti said it had chosen to appeal the “outrageous” decision as the PA had “chosen to blatantly ignore even the minimum and insufficient environmental safeguards” provided by current planning policy.
The Fuel Stations Policy specifically prohibits the development of such facilities on “good quality” agricultural land, and the Burmarrad site had been certified as “good quality” by the PA’s own agricultural advisory committee, which said it could potentially support an agricultural yield valued at about €27,000 a year.
However, the PA case officer had recommended approval as the land was not designated as an area of agricultural value and as the policy allowed such developments if “the community would benefit from the relocation” and there were no “unacceptable adverse environmental concerns”.
Moviment Graffitti said it was also appealing as the overall size of the development was above the 3,000 square metre maximum footprint allowed by law, and over issues such as a lack of complete documentation available to the public, as well as other policy concerns.
“This decision by the PA board is the perfect example of how the planning process in Malta is systematically leading to the destruction of our country in order to satisfy the greed of the few,” Moviment Graffitti said.
“To make sure that developers are totally accommodated, the PA board shamelessly ignores even the feeble safeguards provided by the PA’s own defective policies.”
A revised version of the controversial Fuel Stations Policy, promised back in January 2018, was finally published in April, just days after the Burmarrad station was approved.
The revised version - which is still at least months away from being implemented - reduces the maximum footprint to 1,000 square metres and tightens the restriction to exclude all agricultural land.
Moviment Graffitti has since called for a moratorium until the new policy is implemented, arguing that there would be no point in proposing changes if the currently pending applications continued to be decided under the old policy even as it was being ushered out.