A campsite, complete with an outdoor oven and a lounge area with artificial turf has been set up on the ‘virgin land’ overlooking picturesque San Blas Bay in Gozo.
The owner of the site, Gozitan Joseph Portelli, has already been served with an enforcement notice by Mepa after this newsroom brought to light illegal work at the site back in June, and his latest transgression has proved to be one too far.
This newsroom informed Mepa about the latest developments and it promptly sent enforcement officers to the site on Friday who confirmed that all the new structures in question are illegal.
A Mepa spokesman said that the police have been informed about the case and Mr Portelli will face daily fines.
In July, Mepa said Mr Portelli was supposed to return the site to its original state, yet instead the developer forged ahead with his plans. An orange metal gate blocking access to one part of the site has been removed and replaced by a metal chain.
Two aerial photos taken in July and August clearly show how the area has been turned into a sprawling campsite in the space of a few weeks. Members of this newsroom went to the site this week and found it to be strewn with empty beer cans being used as fiaccoli (oil lamps).
The ‘lounge area’ comes equipped with lighting and a fan to deal with those long hot summer nights when the sea breeze in the protected bay is not enough. Vegetation has been cleared from the four plots owned by Mr Portelli.
When Mr Portelli was confronted by this newsroom about the original infringement, he justified it by saying that he has been using the site for camping for the past 25 years.
The area as a whole is under Level 2 environmental protection by Mepa – the second-highest of four levels of protection applicable to such sites – in that it is an ‘Area of Ecological Importance/Site of Scientific Importance’, so much so that an application for permission to prune a tamarisk tree in the area was turned down by Mepa last year.
It is also an area of “agriculture with a significant area of natural vegetation” according to the European Environmental Agency’s CORINE land cover database, but the natural vegetation on the patch of land being developed has been completely obliterated.
Just last summer, uproar ensued after 29 boulders went missing from the bay. The boulders were later found by the Gozitan Criminal Investigation Department in a nearby field. Gozo Ministry workers had also cleaned algae off the beach with a bulldozer and a mechanical shovel without a Mepa permit.
Illegal kiosk still operating
An illegal structure serving as a kiosk on the other side of San Blas Bay is also still standing and doing a roaring trade, despite being served with an enforcement notice dating back to 2009.
Mepa says the breach related to the change of use of land to cooking and serving food and the hiring of deckchairs and umbrellas and that direct action is pending.
San Blasted
NGOs reaction
More land to be bought
The plot thickens
Mepa discusses issue in 20 minutes