The following is by way of clarification, more than anything else, regarding Mepa’s environmental action, following Noel Grima’s story ‘Enforcing Environmental Permits’ published last Tuesday.
A key consideration in permitting and enforcement is environmental risk, with regulatory effort being invested in those installations which are considered to be of greatest environmental risk. In the EU context, those installations having the greatest environmental risk are those defined within the Integrated Pollution Prevention and Control (IPPC) Directive, which locally consists of 14 installations, including the power stations, landfills, etc. (see http://www.mepa.org.mt/ippc-applications-installations for further details).
IPPC does not necessarily reflect local priorities, as it does not include installations like shipyards or port facilities. Neither does this mean that other enterprises or facilities are excluded from the scope of environmental directives. Various directives on the various environmental media (with particular reference to the numerous directives on waste, water, air, and the handling of chemicals) affect various sectors, some of which are required to obtain some form of environmental permit.
Apart from the IPPC installations, it is envisaged that circa 500 local companies will require environmental permits; this will include operations as diverse as waste management facilities, quarries, various manufacturing firms, and the pharmaceutical sector. Permitting of these sectors has already commenced, with a particular focus upon waste management facilities, and is planned to include various other sectors that are considered to be of medium level risk.
Various small and micro-enterprise sectors (particularly those defined in Legal Notice 106 of 2007) are also affected by environmental regulations; even though the activities of such enterprises tend to be low risk, these may generate localised problems, and the cumulative impact of these sectors is significant. Here regulation focuses on the registration of various sectors, with the objective of providing them with generic standard conditions applicable to the individual sectors. The regulation of this sector is currently being reviewed with a view towards simplification and improvement of environmental standards – further details on this may be obtained from http://www.mepa.org.mt/
ippc-applications-installations.
The permitting system must reflect the realities within which the various installations operate. During the last six months of 2009, 132 inspections were carried out as part of pre-permit evaluations, post-permit compliance audits, and inspections in response to complaints on permitted facilities.
MEPA understands that the introduction of an environmental permitting system is a matter that needs to be approached with an eye to environmental, social and economic sustainability, and will continue to put forward proposals for the further development of the system in the context of the MEPA reform process.
Peter Gingell
Communications Officer
Malta Environment & Planning Authority