I refer to the report carried by your newspaper on 25 March 2014, entitled MEPA Exercise a Futile Waste of Public Money. This report was summarizing comments made by architect Joseph Falzon (MEPA’s former audit officer) on MEPA’s decision on the LNG project at Delimara Power Station. I am deeply and personally offended by a number of statements reported to be made by Mr Falzon in respect of both consultants and MEPA Board members.

I have been acting as an independent consultant in assessing potential impacts of proposed coastal developments on marine water quality for at least 25 years. Throughout these years I have always conducted such assessments in an objective manner and to the best of my scientific and technical ability. My reports always include an objective assessment of the significance of all identified impacts, even though such reports are commissioned by developers. The responsibility of an independent consultant in making a contribution towards an EIA, is not to act as an advocate or an apologist for the developer, but to act an independent consultant as his/her designation implies. My assessment report is submitted to the EIA coordinator with whom I always insist that my whole and unedited report would be included in the final EIA document.

I can cite various instances where I had assessed impacts to be significantly negative on water or marine sediment quality as resulting from various proposed coastal developments (such as that at Hondoq, various marinas, and more recently the Delimara Power Station LNG development). My responsibility is to assess the level of significance of such impacts in an objective manner and not to conclude whether the proposed

developments should be approved or not.

As already indicated, I have been doing this for years and years, and therefore I take great exception to have the level of my personal and professional integrity be questioned by whomever, even if this would be a former MEPA audit officer.

Likewise, I have been appointed as a MEPA Board member in April 2013. Since then I have scrupulously investigated and assessed all applications submitted for the Board’s considerations, and I have always formed an opinion and voted according to my own personal assessment, without the least interference by anyone, including any person from the present administration or from any NGO or lobby group. The experience of the past year proves this, through and through.

Incidentally I wish to remind Mr Falzon that when his own integrity was being questioned by the administration as well as by MEPA itself in 2009, as the then chairman of the Kummissjoni Ambjent of the Church in Malta, we had issued a strong press release supporting his role as auditor and his own level of professional integrity. This does not mean that he should not be able to criticize my own activities now or at any other time. But the least I expect of him is to verify the facts before he make his own statements.

Professor Victor Axiak