Austin Gatt ‘misguided’ by Gozo tunnel consultants

Peter Gatt, a local geologist who specialized in the geology of the Maltese continental shelf, last week lambasted the plans unveiled by the Transport Minister for a tunnel link between the islands.

All four of the proposed routes had been envisaged to tunnel directly into a potentially active 'slipstrike fault' - i.e., a natural formation that is commonly associated with instability and the potential for collapse - that characterizes much of the southeast coastal area of Gozo.

Furthermore, two of the proposed tunnels would also have to pass through a layer of clay beneath the islet of Comino: and the dangers of tunneling through clay, without taking into consideration the precise geological properties of the area, had already been demonstrated by the collapse of the Heathrow airport extension tunnel in 1994.

In both cases (Heathrow extension and Malta-Gozo tunnel) the consultancy agency was the same: Mott MacDonald (UK).

Responding to comments by the minister in last Sunday's edition of MaltaToday, Peter Gatt stood by his earlier claims that Mott MacDonald had drawn up the preliminary report on the tunnel link without undertaking any local field studies.

"The report is described as a preliminary one and not a full feasibility study," he said in response to Minister Gatt's rebuttal last Sunday. "However, even preliminary reports have to adhere to standard practice that incorporates methodologies commonly used at the preliminary stage. Two fundamental approaches are site visits to the area under study and the desk study. These do not constitute detailed geotechnical investigation which should come at a later stage, but are an integral part of a preliminary report which is sadly missing from the Mott MacDonald report."

Moreover, the geologist was unimpressed by Gatt's observation that the existence of a fault system had indeed been noted in the same report, which observed that these may "be more extensive than shown in geological maps".

"Geological maps of Malta do not show submarine faults at all," was his blunt reply. "Such maps only give information on faults and stratigraphy found on land. It is obvious that there are more faults between Malta and Gozo than shown in the published geological maps. In any case, one cannot just rely on published geological maps that are based on studies that date back to 1955 and 1975 and require extensive revision. The accuracy of the geological maps should have been confirmed or challenged by field studies of the sites, yet Mott MacDonald decided not to carry out field studies."

Peter Gatt also questions whether Mott MacDonald took its own statement about the potential dangers posed by Gozo's known fault systems seriously. "If so, then why did they plan the four proposed tunnel routes straight into a potentially active fault? Clearly, Mott MacDonald was unaware of the danger because they did not bother to carry out a desk study on published works pertinent to the geology of the Gozo Channel. If they did their research and found what is already published they would have avoided routing three of the proposed tunnels in one of the most intensely faulted areas of the Maltese Islands..."

It transpires also that Dr Gatt hadpersonally informed the British consultancy firm about these dangers, in a meeting at their London offices last summer.

"It was precisely because I met Mott MacDonald engineers at their office in London that I realised that they lacked basic grounding in Maltese geology," he told MaltaToday. "I tried to warn the government about this, but my comments went unheeded. I can only conclude that the government of Malta believes that British engineers who have never done a field study in Malta know more about the geology of Malta than a Maltese geologist who has studied it for a good part of his life..."

He also stressed that this is not the first time the Transport Ministry had been unwittingly misled by consultants who had failed to do their homework properly.

"The minister should be directing his comments and questions to Mott MacDonald and his own consultants because it is not the first time that minister Gatt was misguided by his consultants," Peter Gatt said. "In 2008 the minister was advised by local consultants who are not geologists, that the road along Ghadira beach should be removed because it was hindering the flow of sand from the hinterland to the beach. This is absolute nonsense. As a scientist I had to express my views in local newspapers at that time and explain that the provenance of sand in Maltese beaches is marine. However, the minister was made to believe something ludicrous by his consultants. One would have hoped that people would learn from past blunders, but that does not seem to be the case. Nevertheless, I wish every success to the Gozotunnel project and to minister Gatt."