Pembroke, Swieqi and Ibraġ residents can soon start sleeping full nights again after they were told by the ombudsman looking into their complaint of noise that the excavation work underneath their houses was nearing the end.
Environment and Planning Ombudsman Alan Saliba told the residents he had been informed that the tunnel had reached the final 30 metres and was due to be completed soon - a matter of days.
The 9.5 kilometre, three-metre wide tunnel, which have kept residents awake at night due to the round-the-clock digging, will carry water from the Pembroke reverse osmosis plant to the Ta’ Qali reservoir.
The matter was raised by a number of residents, led by Arnold Cassola, now an independent, who had written to the Ombudsman to voice his complaint on behalf of hundreds of families in the Swieqi-Ibraġ area who were being deprived of their sleep for weeks while digging continued on the tunnel.
He said that the tunnel, being bored by the Water Services Corporation, is necessary to provide the whole of Malta with decent potable water. But he asked whether the authorities could do something about the inconvenience at night.
He asked the Ombudsman whether he could stop the WSC from continuing the works at night, saying that night rest is a fundamental human right.
The tunnel, 70 metres below the ground surface, will carry water from the Pembroke reverse osmosis plant to the Ta’ Qali reservoir. The €27.5 million project is being carried out by Bonnici Bros and Turkish company Superlit Boru Sanayi A.S.
Superlit Boru Sanayi will provide glass fibre reinforced plastic pipes to be laid inside the tunnel. One of the mains would be used to supply blended water to the central part of the island through a centralised hub feeding, mainly using gravity.
The water transferred from the Pembroke reverse osmosis will be mixed with groundwater at the Ta’ Qali reservoirs, sampled and then treated to ensure the best quality blend, the WSC had explained.
In his reply to Prof. Cassola’s complaint, Mr Saliba said that as ombudsman he could not investigate whether the noise breached the law, he investigated the permits for this project.
He said that according to the project description statement, work was not meant to be carried out at night although the Construction Management Plan green-lighted night-time work.
He said WSC had not found any regulatory breaches by the contractor but informed him that the boring would be ready in a few days.
“While I expected such information to have been communicated by the entities involved rather than the Ombudsman’s office, in the best interest of transparency and good governance, the office will continue following this case,” Mr Saliba said.