Not in our backyard… again

The Xghajra local council is calling on the government to abandon plans to locate the new outfall for storm water collected from southern localities, on a site near the Ta’ Barkat sewage treatment plant.

Mayor Anthony Valvo told MaltaToday the tunnel outlet from which storm water will discharged in to the sea should be located further down the coastline, but such a move could ruin a stretch of undeveloped coastline, The Malta Environment and Planning Authority’s Environmental Protection Department warns.

“The outfall will be only 50 metres from the residential area and it would make more sense to locate it further down the 2km coastline,” Valvo said.

More than 300 residents have signed a petition against the proposed location of the outfall.

MEPA is presently considering an application for a national flood relief project proposed by the resources ministry to redirect storm water in Marsaskala and Zabbar through a tunnel, which finally discharges the water from the Xghajra coastline.

The Environment Protection Department has already pronounced itself in favour of locating the outfall near Ta’ Barkat, to avoid new construction on more pristine parts of the coastline.

But Valvo says the resources ministry had previously identified an acceptable alternative site before the EPD pronounced itself. Now he is surprised that the EPD report was issued while consultation meetings were still taking place.

The council contends its residents are bearing too much of a burden, having already ‘cooperated’ when the sewage treatment plant was shifted from Wied Ghammieq in Kalkara to Ta’ Barkat because of the Smart City project.

In a letter to MEPA chairman Austin Walker last April, Valvo complained that residents had only been “reluctantly tolerant” of the sewage plant. But now they had become “rather vocal” over the new storm water outfall.

“The sewage treatment plant is  enough in our locality, so let’s not jeopardise an otherwise reluctant but sensible co operation. We do not agree and object that an outflow site for the storm water of Zabbar and Marsascala should be imposed and end up along the sewage plant site,” Valvo wrote.

Wasted resource

Valvo told MaltaToday that dumping any kind of water in the sea was an “unacceptable situation”. 30,000 cubic metres of treated water from the sewage plant is already disposed on a daily basis, but this is done through an outfall located one kilometre offshore.

“What a waste of a resource, considering that water production by reverse osmosis in Malta costs millions of euros in electricity,” Valvo said.

A spokesperson for the Water Services Corporation pointed out that without a submarine outfall that diverts the water further out from the shore, the impact on Xghajra could be accentuated. This was a condition imposed on the WSC by MEPA when it came to the sewage treatment outfall.  The WSC is also adamantly opposed to construction traffic using the plant’s internal roads as suggested in the EIA for the project.

“This is absolutely unacceptable to the Water Services Corporation and will not be permitted,” the WSC said.

Cheaper to dump

The new storm water outfall is required by the National Flood Relief Project to prevent flash floods caused by heavy storms, which usually recur once every five years. This will ensure run-off does not surpass the 10cm mark in streets.

The project is a tunnel which follows an L-shaped route to divert run-off from Zabbar and parts of Triq Wied il-Ghajn in Marsaskala, to Ta’ Barkat. Road culverts will feed the tunnel, which will have grit separation equipment to minimise oil contamination of the rainwater before reaching the sea.

The EPD is still convinced Ta’ Barkat is the only spot where a new breach in the natural coast can be considered as being acceptable in principle because this site is already developed.

Locating it elsewhere would “result in the permanent defacement of undeveloped natural rocky coast to accommodate a new tunnel outlet,” the EPD has warned.

But it also shares concern that there is no attempt at harvesting the rainwater. Government consultants on the other hand say their studies show that the cost to save this rainwater renders the project unfeasible.