One does not necessarily need to be a tree hugger to realise that a number of crimes are often committed where the main victim happens to be our own environment.
To endorse such a project as Ħondoq ir-Rummien at a time when Gozo is meant to be in the development process to become an eco-island, would be, apart from being a sheer perversity of the truth, tantamount to an environmental crime. The forthcoming extension of the power station at Delimara will no doubt create an environmental scar that will not heal or be papered over easily. Even though government is trying to use Orwellian talk by claiming that Malta’s energy plans have fallen behind due to PL obstructionism on this project, we have the erector’s self-professed claim that the whole project is most likely to be completed well ahead of schedule to disprove government even on this particular aspect.
This time last year after various statements by the PL on the subject, we even had the NGOs issuing an impassioned plea expressing their serious concern that there were still potentially serious environmental problems which had not been properly tackled.
They had made a claim that we had made earlier on that the power station working on heavy fuel oil will generate some 30 tonnes a day of hazardous waste from the filtration of its chimney gases.
One other issue which government has invariably glossed over this past year is that apart from the solid waste, the plant will produce about one tonne per day of heavy fuel oil sludge, which in turn cannot be burnt by its engines.
Originally the EIA had suggested that it should be burnt at the Marsa incinerator.
When Mepa heard of the proposal at the Delimara power station hearing, it ruled out this option as the Marsa incinerator does not have an IPPC permit to burn heavy fuel oil sludge.
The environmental groups were quick to ring the alarm bells because they felt that there must not be a repeat of the black dust charade, where Mepa summarily stopped Enemalta transferring fly ash to an unlicensed quarry, after ignoring the gross infringement for four whole years.
Although the idea of criminal action on environmental crime grounds had been contemplated against the perpetrator of the latter act to the best of my knowledge – as long predicted by all and sundry – the whole issue was allowed to die a natural death.
I have chosen my words carefully and faithfully in line with what the NGOs had said then to avoid colouring up the public statements they had made, for any political gain.
In spite of all these problems, the authorities not only refused to seriously avoid using heavy fuel oil then as fuel for the DPSE but they are now in the process of submitting it to tests in the very near future.
It is common knowledge that Mepa already has an IPPC Permit issuing date in mind, the same way that it has already committed itself by when the extension (or rather phase one of it) should be up and running.
While the Maltese public seems by now resigned to the perpetration of yet another ‘environmental crime’ at a time when Mepa is trying to sell us the hype that it is busy greening our environment and economy, there is another aspect of the whole saga that is often deliberately forgotten – the cost factor.
What is the difference in the cost of a unit between diesel and HFO, when all savings have been taken into account?
Enemalta had once said 24%. Minister Tonio Fenech had said 30%.
Minister Fenech had also repeatedly asserted that the use of diesel would result in an immediate rise of 30% in electricity bills.
The NGOs had told him clearly that this was completely wrong.
Their argument – since then uncontested – ran as follows:
With Marsa switched off, the DPSE working flat out will provide less than half our needs. (Their only miscalculation is that we shall remain over dependent on Marsa for longer than we thought as a result of poor government management, planning and foresight!).
That means that the average cost of a unit will go up by 15% at most and not 30%.
But if one were to accept the Enemalta figure for the diesel surcharge the increase would come down to 12%.
Even so that figure can and could probably be cut down further, and will also be offset by lower pollution-related healthcare costs.
So much so that the NGOs had suggested that the decent option in the public interest was for Enemalta to go for a diesel-fuelled power station extension at Delimara.
That the nation’s health called for and continues to call for nothing else seems to be something about which this government remains completely indifferent.
With this attitude firmly in mind, no one should accuse the PL of cynicism for sniggering when recalling that all that seems to matter for this government is that we shall soon have a new national environmental policy and that arguably during the Fall our Parliament will start discussing – much belatedly – a sustainable development bill; after having allowed the former Mepa Bill’s provisions on SD to operate in a vacuum. In complete inertia.
[email protected]
www.leobrincat.com
Leo Brincat is the Shadow Minister for the Environment, Sustainable Development & Climate Change