Barely a month has elapsed since the last elections and all the pompous bluster about green, open spaces has already fizzled into thin air as it’s back to the usual ODZ-approval antics by the Planning Authority.
In Gozo, Joseph Portelli is once again calling the shots, probably delivering on his 100-year-long construction agenda he deems essential for the islands.
As if the outcries and denouncements over his (and those of his business associates’) forays at Sannat (hundreds of apartments in unsightly blocks just a few hundreds of metres away from the cliff edge being approved despite accusations of EIA process salami-slicing) and at Qala (excavation work linked with a communal pool initiated prior to formal permits being in hand) were not enough, Portelli and co. are back to what they do best… developing ODZ areas in Gozo or other areas that verge on ODZ ones.
At Xagħra, for instance, the sprawling Gozitan village that has expanded beyond recognition in recent years, Portelli and associates have applied (PA/07509/21) to excavate a massive 1,645m2 footprint in the underlying valley for the purposes of adding a swimming pool to an existing 24-apartment block domineering over the ridge along the road leading to Marsalforn.
As if to rub further salt into the wound, no mention was made of these swimming pool plans when the apartment block was further proposed (PA/098/03) and approved way back in 2019, with such a ruse working to a tee, given that mainstream environmentalists and even the ERA failed to flag this development and to submit objections.
Neither did these swimming pool plans feature in an advertorial video of the apartment block circulated by Portelli’s company way back in 2019. Fast forward three years and, as if acting verbatim from the developers’ rule book, Portelli and associates apply for the swimming pool on land they claim to be ‘disturbed’, despite the same land being ODZ in nature and partly supporting dense maquis vegetation typical of valley sides.
In fact, as exposed by activist and journalist Victor Paul Borg, the planning conditions imposed by the Planning Authority way back in 2019 when approving the apartment block (which dominates the Xagħra ridge landscape through its gaudy and garish design and dimensions) were not adhered to.
Specifically, so as to legislate against any spillover of construction activity onto the dense maquis habitat over which the apartment block abuts, the PA had prescribed that the land that extended outside the actual apartment block footprint and which was inevitably disturbed as a result of the placement of the mounting crane and the temporary hoarding of construction material had to be restored prior to completion of the project.
Predictably, this restoration was never executed, such that this parcel of land, earmarked partly for the swimming pool development, ‘enjoys’ the status of ‘disturbed land’, rendering it congenial for development, also since the clearance of maquis vegetation extended beyond the permitted boundaries.
Very convenient indeed and the PA’s enforcement agency never got a whiff of this shortcoming, it seems, until now. In the same spirit as the degradation of parcels of land prior to their development, properties are allegedly already advertised for sale by the contractor’s company even before permits for the same have been issued.
In Gozo, Joseph Portelli is once again calling the shots- Alan Deidun
This has been the case at Sannat and at Ta’ żwejta, limits of Victoria, where Portelli and associates have applied to construct yet another apartment block just metres away from a watercourse, with the same apartments being advertised for sale even before the development notice was even affixed on site! A subtle way of making the PA coy about not granting the necessary permits or simply a ruse prevalent in the real estate world?
Sandro Chetcuti had taken this author to task way back in December 2014 for alleging, during an interview with a local newspaper, that “developers were dumping in green areas to degrade the area and to help facilitate the issuing of permits”. At the time, the Malta Developers Association (MDA) had got hot under the collar and quickly rebutted my statement, stating that:
“The Malta Developers Association (MDA) has refuted allegations that developers are dumping in green areas to degrade the area and help facilitate the issuing of permits. While it could well be that in the past there was the odd rogue trader who might have thought that degrading land is a path to obtaining building permits, the MDA vehemently rebuts the generalisation implicit in the statement that condemns all developers for doing something that they are certainly not doing today.”
I wonder if Chetcuti and the MDA still share the same opinion given the many instances since then, including the one at Xagħra, where developers chose to ‘pre-empt things’ by degrading first and applying after.
But what really takes the biscuit is the fact that the 24-apartment block in question ostensibly carries the name ‘The Valley’, as if Portelli and associates wish to pay tribute to the same natural asset their antics are scarifying.
Such revolting tactics, which no authority seems capable or willing to reign in, will ensure that the 60,000-odd crowd of disillusioned voters who chose not to exercise their democratic right at the last elections will soar even more in five years’ time given that hollow promises of even more sterilised green open spaces simply don’t cut it. Any sociologist or political scientist worth his salt can predict such an inevitable result.
And if further proof was ever needed of the sense of impunity enjoyed by construction magnates in Gozo, news emerged last week of the physical aggression to which Qala’s mayor, Paul Buttigieg was subjected to, presumably at the hands of a local contractor’s employee.
Without speculating overtly on a case still under investigation, the mayor has been an outspoken critic of plans for Ħondoq ir-Rummien bay for the past 20 years as well as of the recurrent misdemeanours conducted by contractors at Qala.
The Xagħra valley-side swimming pool application will be deliberated upon by the PA tomorrow, given a recent deferral. Approval of the same will reinforce the perception out there that the PA is simply back to business following the pre-election lull in ODZ permitting.