MEPA chairman defies NGOs’ call to resign

Green NGOs yesterday insisted that the environmental ombudsman's report on the Mistra Heights development, a 770-apartment development atop the Mistra Ridge, confirmed that the outline permit issued in 2008 was not cast in stone and could have been "revoked and challenged".

Flimkien ghal-Ambjent Ahjar coordinator Astrid Vella and veteran environmentalist Edward Mallia yesterday followed up on calls by Alternattiva Demokratika, saying the MEPA board and chairman Vince Cassar had to tender their resignation.

Environment and Planning Commissioner David Pace said the MEPA board did not have its hands tied by the previous permit issued in 2008 and concluded that the original outline permit could have been revoked.

Moreover, the ombudsman said that the current MEPA board chaired by chairman Vince Cassar was in breach of the law when it met in a private session, to discuss the request to revoke the original permit issued for Mistra Heights in 2008.

He said secretive meetings were ruled out by Article 6 of the Environment and Planning Act which states that "meetings of the Authority shall be open to the public". Although the law permits the board to deliberate in private, any vote has to be conducted in public.

Vella and Mallia subscribed to Alternattiva Demokratika's call for the resignation of the MEPA board and said that whoever was responsible for the decision not to revoke the permit behind closed doors, should shoulder responsibility.

However, MEPA chairman Vince Cassar said there was absolutely no reason for him and the rest of the board members to resign. "There is no reason at all for us to resign," Cassar told MaltaToday, insisting that the authority's board acted correctly in granting a full development permit for the Mistra project.

Asked to comment on the ombudsman's conclusion that the board acted illegally when it decided against the revocation of the outline permit behind closed doors, Cassar said that the MEPA board was still evaluating Pace's report and would issue its reaction in due time.

On its part, MEPA itself said that it was duty bound to follow in principle the planning rights granted through an outline planning permission. "The Environment and Planning Commissioner incorrectly arrived at a conclusion that the conditions of the outline permission were somehow cast in stone. The outline permission sets out the planning parameters, which are further expounded in the full development application. In this case, there was no marked departure from the principle of development."

MEPA claimed that the Environment Impact Assessment was a very thorough on, and that the law cited by the Commissioner requiring the authority's meetings to be held in public did not apply at the stage where it was considering whether to start the procedure for a revocation of a permission. "It only applies in the case of planning applications and planning control applications. There is a different and particular section of the law which regulates the special procedure for the revocation of a permit, which was duly followed.

"In this case, the authority used the identical procedure which has been used in similar cases throughout the years under different MEPA boards. The correctness and legality of this procedure was never questioned, nor challenged."

Mistra decision 'obscene'

Describing MEPA's decision to grant permission to the construction of 774 apartments on the former Mistra Village site as "obscene," Astrid Vella said that the ombudsman's report proved the green lobby's resistance to the project had been justified.

Following the approval, the parliamentary secretary for planning Michael Farrugia claimed that had MEPA refused to issue permits for 774 apartments on the former Mistra Village, it would have resulted in government paying the applicant up to €70 million in damages.

However, Edward Mallia said that the parliamentary secretary was "shooting from the hip" and said that such claims were ludicrous.

Vella insisted that in his report, the ombudsman had highlighted a number shortcomings in the outline permit and this confirmed that the MEPA board had "every right and reason to deny the permit".

She explained that the full development permit issued by MEPA was based on the Floor Area Ratio policy, which has never been ratified.

Describing it as a "malicious" decision, Mallia said that the Mistra project, which will drastically alter the landscape, was based on a policy which was never ratified - the floor area ratio policy, which rationalized the footprint of a development to compensate for a height that goes beyond local plan limits.

While not excluding the possibility of challenging the full development permit on legal grounds, Vella said that an appeal could still be lodged at MEPA.

Mallia said that the Pace report compared the Mistra development with that of the revoked permit for the 'Spin Valley" discotheque on land owned by former MP Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando in Mistra.

"The same should have applied to this mega project on the Xemxija ridge," Mallia said.