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Gilbert Calleja
The detrimental effects of white dust and noise from construction factories alongside Naxxar Road, also known as Mosta road, in Lija are bound to persist, unless new legislation is enacted, the Malta Environment and Planning Authority told MaltaToday this week.
Reacting to decades of complaints from neighbours, MEPA said the activities of the factories – sources of noise and air pollution ever since Mabel Strickland launched a seminal court case back in 1970 against Blokrete Ltd – could “not be considered acceptable either from an environmental point of view or from one of good neighbourliness.”
However, the factories were also operating under conditions stipulated in licences issued by the police many years ago, MEPA spokesperson Sylvana Debono said. “Unless new legislation is enacted little can be done to regulate such activities.”
Lija residents have complained with both their local council and Justice and Home Affairs Minister Tonio Borg, who lives in the constituency, of noise pollution from the Blokrete factory and a nearby quarry on Labour Avenue in Naxxar, and the effects of the scattering of fine white dust over the area and a grove of 200-year-old olive trees.
In 1970, Mabel Strickland launched what many believe is the first environmental actions to rid Lija of the plague of white dust spewing out of the Blokrete factory which would blanket trees, houses and roads.
Launched at time when manufacturing was priority in a developing economy, the expense to collect the dust and hose down the factory area was considered a far too big an expense to impose on the company.
Strickland took Blokrete up to court in 1970 when she complained the factory’s activities were causing great harm to people and surrounding agricultural lands and trees, and houses. The Court had upheld that the factory’s operations where causing grave harm, and found Blokrete responsible for the damage caused by ordering the company to take the necessary measures to curb the effects of its operations.
MEPA spokesperson Sylvana Debono said the authority was currently working on a “permitting strategy”, which will determine which type of environmental activities may be permitted, how they will operate, on what conditions and their tariffs. “The integrated pollution prevention control permits is already in effect but the sector is vast and very few professionals available.”
gcalleja@mediatoday.com.mt
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