A man living next to a Siġġiewi plasterworks factory operating without a permit has claimed dust from the works is killing his 50-year-old trees and causing a skin irritation.

Antoine Borg says he has “had enough” after two years living next to the operation in a disused quarry known as Ta’ Matti & Sons and is “desperate” to be heard by the authorities.

Complaints have also been shared on social media by other residents in the area about the factory, which operates without any air filtering systems in place.

However, the owner of the quarry and the factory’s operator insist they are not doing anything illegal.

Borg, who lives a few hundred metres away from the quarry, says that dozens of his family’s trees have died since the factory began operating in 2019.

“It’s not that we don’t want other people to work, it’s that we want to be able to live without losing everything,” the 47-year-old said.

“It’s horrible to see 50-year-old trees wither and die because the air quality is so bad here,” he added, breaking off brittle branches from one specimen after another to show a layer of dust coating each one.

“These trees were here since the previous generation of my family. Look at how dry they are, these used to be healthy. They don’t have the right air, they can’t breathe, this operation is killing our trees,” he said.

He also said his skin has started to come out in blotches and that his eyes are constantly stinging from the poor air quality.

'Sand-sieving' operation

Borg claims that the damage is being caused by the preparation of quicklime. But both Charles Camilleri, the owner of the quarry, and Muhammed Kasem, who operates the factory, say no quicklime is being produced.

They say it is a “sand-sieving” operation.

The Environment and Resources Authority (ERA) responded to complaints about the operation in May last year, and issued a ‘stop and compliance order’ after an investigation “confirmed that material used in plastering was being produced and packaged in sacks”.

“ERA also referred the activity to the Planning Authority and the Environmental Health Directorate to investigate whether the activity was according to planning laws and to investigate any potential adverse effects on human health respectively,” a spokesperson for the authority said.

The spokesperson then emphasised that current environmental regulations do not require an environmental permit for sand-sieving and that the authority is in the process of drafting legislation that “would encompass such activities”.

Eventually, ERA’s stop and compliance order was withdrawn as “the operator had engaged an engineer and provided further technical information on the process”.

According to the authority, the activity does not fall within the scope of industrial emissions regulations, and the operation has continued unabated since.

Sand-sieving is carried out to obtain sand particles of the right size which are then dried and mixed with quicklime to provide a compact, solid coating that dries rapidly and forms a strong protective layer over brickwork.

Quicklime is one of the types of dry powder that is mixed with water to produce the paste that plasterers use on their job.

“No, they don’t manufacture quicklime in there, they’re just sieving sand they get from somewhere in Mellieħa. Who told you that? ERA came to check, they always just show up and leave afterwards. We are not doing anything illegal,” Camilleri said when contacted by Times of Malta.

The landowner said that he has told the operators to install air filters.

“We don’t have a permit to operate there but I applied for one and we are waiting for the Planning Authority to take a decision,” he added.

Kasem acknowledged that neighbours had informed him about “problems they were facing” and said he hoped to have “filters in place by next month or something like that”.

The operator also said that since ERA had not stopped them from operating, they continued doing so, saying that “no laws are being broken here”.

Borg says his pleas for help from the authorities have been ignored and that he can’t afford to take legal action.

“That means I need to find money to hire an architect and then a lawyer so I can stop living with everything covered in this dust? I can’t afford any of that,” Borg said.