Munxar ‘high landscape value’ area eyed by fireworks society

An application to develop a brand new fireworks factory has been presented by the Tal-Karmnu pyrotechnics society in the open countryside in the area known as Ta’ Anglu in Munxar.

The Malta Environment and Planning Authority had previously rejected three applications to develop a fireworks factory on the same land or on adjacent land parcels.

The proposed factory is being proposed over 7,050 square metres of undeveloped land and is scheduled as an Area of High Landscape Value.

The application presented on 20 August is still being vetted by MEPA.

The proposal is close to the site of a factory which exploded in 1997, killing two people. An application to rebuild it was presented in 1999 and was turned down twice, in 2002 and 2004.

In 2007, yet another application was filed but this time it was withdrawn by the applicant before it was even considered by MEPA.

Another application presented in 2008 was turned down in 2010. The development was proposed over a larger area, including the site of the development proposed in the latest application and an area closer to the Tas-Sanap coastal cliffs.

But four years ago MEPA’s Development Control Commission unanimously turned down the application because the site falls within a scheduled area of high landscape value and because of the ecological and scientific importance of Xlendi Valley and the coastal cliffs just metres away.

The original factory had been built according to a permit granted in 1988. In 1999, two years after the explosion which almost completely demolished it, the society filed an application to rebuild it but only part of it would have been constructed on the site where the previous factory once stood.

This application had been refused and then dismissed at reconsideration stage and again at appeals stage.

The construction of new fireworks factories is not permitted by the Gozo and Comino Local Plan. Under this plan “there is a general presumption against new fireworks factories in Gozo”.

But this categorical exclusion of any such development may be over ruled by a new policy regulating the development of fireworks factories.

The new policy which awaits final approval effectively bans fireworks factories in Areas of Ecological Importance (Levels 1 and 2) or Sites of Scientific Importance (Levels 1 and 2) but does not refer to Areas of High Landscape Value (like the site in question) and buffer zones to scheduled sites.