Fort Cambridge development EIA

It seems that the government is on the road to accepting that Mepa made a grave mistake when it waived the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) for the Fort Cambridge development (July 18).

Following a meeting between Minister George Pullicino and European Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas, the "EU Commission is confident that... an EIA will be carried out for this high-rise building". Malta had till the end of July to reply to the Commission's first warning letter on the matter.

Mepa had decided that an EIA for the ex-Crowne Plaza mega-project is not required and has vehemently defended its decision in a number of press releases and articles in the press.

In what could turn out to be another "defeat" for Mepa, the authority again emerges as a grossly incompetent organisation, just as it was shown to be when it chose Xaghra l-Hamra as the preferred site for a golf course. In order to remedy the sorry state of affairs in Mepa, Minister Pullicino and Mr Dimas agreed to hold a technical seminar in Malta "in order to better understand each other's way of doing things on the planning and development side".

So is this the Minister's solution to the chaotic mess at Mepa? Is this where the buck stops? A training course for Mepa officials? The Mepa officials will yet again be made to look like veritable idiots (i.e. scapegoats) when it is very evident that decisions to waive the EIAs of mega-projects worth millions of liri are taken by others.

No, the Maltese public expects and deserves much more than that. For a start, we expect the government to acknowledge the fact that there is no way the Fort Cambridge development should have got away without an EIA. More importantly, Mepa must withdraw the development permit immediately. For what good is a posthumous EIA? The EIA is a tool that predicts impacts, and is the main source of information on which a decision whether a development can go ahead is formed. Some of the impacts of the works are already being felt. Having a detailed study on the impacts after the mess is made is utterly useless and is an insult to residents' and the EU Commission's intelligence.

Clearly, Mepa's credibility is at its lowest ebb ever. Instead of pulling up its socks, it persists in defending the indefensible through a barrage of propaganda articles and media slots (using considerable sums of taxpayers' money for that!) and attacking individuals of unquestionable integrity as Carmel Cacopardo and Astrid Vella.

That the government is considering a U-turn regarding the waiver of the EIA on Fort Cambridge should be taken as an expression of no-confidence in Mepa. This is especially relevant because it comes less than a week after the director general of Mepa published a lengthy article defending Mepa's decision on Fort Cambridge. Clearly Mepa is in a veritable mess, and some high-level positions within Mepa are becoming increasingly untenable.

In conclusion, I must reiterate the urgent need to revoke the recent EIA regulations that have reduced the transparency of the EIA process and further empowered developers; our country's well-being depends on this. The commissioning of the EIA at Fort Cambridge will be a very short-lived victory for residents' rights when these new regulations make it much easier for future developments to bypass the EIA process.

Given the situation at Mepa and the ministry as detailed above, the Maltese public would have far more confidence in such regulations if they were to be drafted by the EU Commission on our behalf. Our "competent authority" is clearly not up to the task.

Editorial note: The Environment Ministry had specified that at the meeting in Brussels there had been no talk about an EIA being carried out over the Fort Cambridge development. It said it was "inconceivable" how a Commission spokesman should say the Commission was confident an EIA would be carried out.