The board’s decision followed the planning directorate’s recommendation for refusal published last Monday, together with a

myriad of speakers from the anti-golf course lobby who yesterday packed the Mepa board room.

However, Angelo Xuereb, the man behind the proposal, is determined to take it to the end and as he left the meeting, he announced that he will be appealing against the decision to Mepa’s appeals board.

“I am disappointed with the decision. We were not given the opportunity to voice our case,” Mr Xuereb said.

Mr Xuereb has 30 days in which to file his appeal. The appeals board will be made up of different people from the ones who voted against the project yesterday.

When asked by The Malta Independent if the unanimous decision of the board and the wide front opposing the project affected him, Mr Xuereb said: “I will appeal against the decision because I believe that the project is a positive one. Whatever you do, you will get opposition for it – that comes with the game.”

Asked whether he will be re-evaluating some of the more contentious points, such as the choice of turf, Mr Xuereb said that his team will be looking at the project again, but that he thought they would probably re-submit it to the appeals board as it is.

The decision followed a three-hour process of presentations and counter presentations from the planning directorate and the floor, which were at times characterised by tense moments. At one point Alternattiva Demokratika secretary Stephen Cachia was about to be escorted out of the board room by one of the police officers present at the meeting.

Mr Cachia had asked Dr Simon Tortell to give the date of a letter he was reading from. Dr Tortell was quoting the Department of Agriculture as saying in a 1997 letter that, in principle, it was in favour of the golf course at Verdala. Mr Cachia made the point that the letter referred to the original nine-hole proposal and not to the extended 18-hole golf course.

The developers were given about 30 minutes to respond to the planning directorate’s presentation, which substantiated their recommendation for refusal. After that the developers were given another 15 minutes to respond to the points made by a number of anti-golf course campaigners and a few more minutes were given to their architect Alexander Bezzina. Other speakers were given three minutes each for their arguments, most of which were against the proposals.

The main points of contention that emerged from the planning directorate report and were amplified during the discussion were: the huge area of good agricultural land that will be lost to the development; the permanent change to the cultural value of the area’s landscape; the potential damage to the aquifer – beneath parts of the land earmarked for the project – due to the extensive, year-round use of nitrogen to maintain the turf; the

damage to the ecological habitat of the zone and the particular species of turf selected for the golf course, said to pose a risk of contaminating the surrounding areas.

The Environmental Impact Assessment presented by the developers included a number of solutions to these problems, but accepted that the loss of good agricultural land could not be mitigated. Moreover, the resources authority contradicted the EIA section which said that the aquifer beneath the tract earmarked would probably not be affected. Added to this, the Mepa planning directorate considered that the risk of damaging the aquifer beneath the land was too great.

Before voting, board member Joe Brincat pointed out that he voted against this particular project on the site earmarked and that he was not against the idea of another golf course, adding that he felt the need to qualify his vote because he knew that people will start to interpret the vote in the days to come.

In comments to this newspaper, AD chairman Harry Vassallo said that it was a victory for the country and for the laws that prevailed at yesterday’s hearing. Asked whether AD was against golf courses in general or just the Verdala project, Dr Vassallo did not commit himself but said that the idea should be considered in detail against the background of the extraordinary shortage of spring water that characterised Malta.