The Environment and Resources Authority (ERA) shall be appealing the PA decision taken in connection with PA 1191/05 (Townsquare High Rise Project). The Board considers that it has sufficient legal and substantive arguments to appeal this case. Further details will be issued following the submission of the appeal.
While ERA has concerns about PA 0581/16 (Mriehel High Rise Project), it believes that an appeal is not the most appropriate tool to address these concerns. ERA shall be taking alternative measures to ensure that such concerns are presented at the right fora, for the best possible outcome.
In the meantime, ERA would like to state that it is not in principle against high rise buildings, as long as these developments take into full account the principles of sustainability. Nonetheless ERA will also be taking other initiatives, including the submission of formal recommendations to Government, to ensure that such high rise developments will be assessed within an improved comprehensive planning and environmental framework.
These decisions were taken today (12th September 2016), at ERA's Board meeting.
Meanwhile ERA chief Prof. Victor Axiak published the memo he had sent to the Planning Authority meeting since he was sick but which was not read out to the board.
Prof. Axiak said: “At this stage I feel obliged to make public a memo on my personal opinion that I had prepared 24 hours prior to the meeting of the Planning Authority of the 4th August 2016, wherein decisions on these high rise developments were taken. I purposely refrained from making my personal opinion public, in order to avoid undue public pressure on the individual ERA Board members before they could reach their decision of today.”
The memo said:
I will here apply the above observation to one aspect of the EIA on this project: air quality and the wind microclimate assessment. The same observation is highly relevant to a number of other aspects of the EIA of this project.
The air quality assessment is based on a number of assumptions which only take into account the Townsquare HR development itself. It fails to take into account the Fort Cambridge HR (PA2960/16) which has already been submitted to PA for consideration, which includes a HR of 40 storeys and which is located less than 100m from the Townsquare tower.
Likewise, the wind microclimate assessment of the Townsquare HR, which includes detailed modelling results of the wind microclimate at street level around the Townsquare Tower itself under different wind directions, fails completely to take into account the proposed Fort Cambridge Tower less than 100 m away.
It is well known that the presence of two tall towers which are relatively close to each other, are bound to significantly influence the wind regimes both between the towers and around each of them. This means that while within the legal EIA framework, the Townsquare consultants were correct in their assessments (since the Fort Cambridge HR has not yet been officially approved, nor considered), their conclusions on impacts are a sham, since such conclusions do not take into account the likely presence of Fort Cambridge HR in the vicinity. In other words, the EIA approach on a case-by-case basis (even if correctly applied as required by the relevant EIA Directive) fails to correctly assess the likely impacts on the presence of a number of HR projects in a particular area.
PA 0581/16 Mriehel High Rise
The same argument applies to the purported impact assessment of this HR. It is likely that the impacts on air quality and on wind micro-climate would not be significant (unlike those of Townsquare HR), but the impact of long-distance landscape views and visual changes in such landscape, is another matter.
During the informal discussions on this development, at the PA Board, I had specifically requested whether other similar HR projects within the immediate vicinity of the Mriehel Towers, may be ruled out. Evidently, the answer was negative, since the FAR policy does not contemplate any thresholds or carrying capacity for the development of towers in the same area. Therefore the impact assessment on landscape and visual amenities is incomplete and inconclusive.
Furthermore it is pertinent to point out that photographic evidence (even if validated and corrected to supposedly represent images as seen by the human eye) is often insufficient to assess such impacts. For example, I went to check personally the visual views of the area from Mdina (Pjazza tas-Sur), as claimed by the photographs presented by the EIA report (ViewPoint 1).
Such photographic viewpoint indicates that the Mriehel Towers would be barely visible from Mdina. However from the same viewpoint and under reasonably same sky conditions, I (a 65 year old!) could visually see quite clearly, the dome of the Carmelite Church in Valletta and the Portomaso Tower in Sliema. Both structures were absent from the photographic viewpoint 1 presented in the EIA report.
Conclusion: After thoroughly reviewing the DPARs, the EIA and other reports, I have no doubt that had I the privilege of attending the PA meeting tomorrow, I would have voted against both developments.
I also understand that ERA (formerly EPD) was involved in the EIA process for both developments under discussion. It certified that the EIA process as adopted and applied in both cases, was generally correct.
However this is NOT in question. The point being made here is that the EIA process itself is insufficient to assess impacts of HR developments in particular areas (as designated by the FAR policy). Such assessment of impacts, and more so, of the thresholds and capping limit that a particular area may accommodate of such towers, may only result from holistic and strategic reports.