Three local councils in the immediate vicinity of the Delimara power station – Marsaxlokk, Żejtun and Birżebbuġa - are continuing to put up stiff resistance to the soon-to-be-realised prospect of the Delimara power station extension being run, very controversially, on heavy fuel oil.
They are baffled and seriously concerned by the government’s choice of this type of fuel, and appear not ready to take the matter lying down. And they are quite right in their stance.
The government, for all its talk of reducing energy production-based pollution and costs, has so far failed to back up its lip service with hard facts. It says that the new technology to be implemented, hitherto untried and untested, will mitigate ensuing pollution but no one is convinced. And unconvinced they will remain since independent experts have failed to endorse such statements and have, in fact, refuted them.
The people, given the national energy provider’s highly dubious environmental track record, are, quite rightly, concerned for their health and the health of their families.
As for track records, we have had the mysterious black dust saga and an inquiry in the end laying the blame for the pollution at the feet of the Marsa power station. We have had the debacle in which the Marsa power station’s precipitators were simply switched off because there was, inexplicably, nowhere left to store the fly ash pollution they collect. The pollution was instead left to disperse into the air at the rate of a ton a day for months on end. And most recently we have had the scandalous burning and illegal disposal of mercaptan.
In all these cases, convenience and cost issues took priority over environmental and public health concerns. These are unacceptably shameful incidents that have placed public health in danger, and for which there has not even been a public apology, let alone the taking of accountability for such actions and decisions.
And now we are told that despite the fact that the extension will be run on one of the most polluting fuels in circulation today, and several heavy fuel oil environmental disasters have been documented, the contractor’s technology, to be used for the first time in Malta, will apparently ensure nothing harmful gets out of the chimneys.
On the one hand we are told that this technology coupled with the heavy fuel oil option will control the pollution, with toxic waste nevertheless needing to be hauled several kilometres for storage and eventual export. On the other, experts beg to differ and in the meantime all people have to go on is Enemalta’s highly dubious track record when it comes to matching energy production with environmental concerns.
Now, according to some experts, the use of heavy fuel oil at Delimara stands to make an already terrible situation worse still. Effectively adding insult to injury, the government, in the face of stiff opposition from several if not all quarters, has chosen the contractor that offered the heavy fuel oil option (how that contractor won the extension bid is another story altogether).
The areas in question are already heavily polluted by fine particulate matter emanating from Delimara’s smokestacks, at times several times over the EU’s minimum thresholds, as figures produced last weekend by the councils in question clearly show. Let us not render an already disgraceful situation worse.
It is true that Malta as a country is far too small to avoid locating facilities such as power stations close to residents. But, then again, considering the country’s unique smallness, shouldn’t we be going the extra mile to ensure that what we do locate near residents is, at the very least, as clean as possible?
The government’s choice of the heavy fuel oil option over gasoil (diesel) is a travesty to any such school of thought, particularly so when energy producer Enemalta itself is quoted as saying that the use of gasoil would result in 40 % less pollution.