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Sandro Mangion catches up with Minister for Resources and Infrastructure Ninu Zammit to enquire about the works that are being undertaken in a bid to avert floods
Travelling from one appointment to another in this unbearable heat makes me look forward eagerly to the bounty of spending an hour in a Minister's air-conditioned office, sipping chilled sparkling water as I fire my questions and digest the answers I get.
Yet, Resources and Infrastructure Minister Ninu Zammit has other plans for me this Tuesday morning.
"Listen, explaining the projects verbally will take ages and will confuse you rather than inform you. There is nothing better than seeing with your own eyes. Let's get into my car and go on site," Mr Zammit suggested… or, rather, decided, a few minutes after I had set foot into his Ministry in Floriana. Yes, Minister! And off we darted to Qormi and Marsa.
There we were, strolling through dust and debris as we toured the extensive works that are being undertaken to ensure that flooding tragedies like the one that devastated parts of the island in September last year do not happen again.
The Qormi/Marsa catchment area is one of the island's two major watercourses, the second one being the Burmarrad/Salini zone. According to the Government's plans, the bulk of the works at Qormi/Marsa should be wrapped up by mid-October. On the other hand, the second daunting project at Burmarrad/Salini will be finished next year. After that, other smaller projects to alleviate other areas, such as the Birkirkara/Msida, from flooding will be undertaken.
"After the floods we experienced in September last year, we set up a committee to identify the flaws in our storm water management system," said Mr Zammit. And flaws there were! It 'resulted' (but tell me, did we need a study to find out this?) that Malta's two main watercourses had received no maintenance for entire years, even as much as 30 years in certain areas. Furthermore, it has been 'discovered' that the watercourses are dotted with defective engineering and illogical actions as a result of which the storm water's flow was being blocked instead of facilitated in its course towards the open sea.
Common sense seems to have been scarce over the past years. For instance, only God knows when the valleys from where the storm water that ends up in these two catchment areas originates have seen the last clean-up. There's more. In Qormi/Marsa there was a point between the Lowenbrau brewery and the Marsa Sports Ground where the man-made watercourse suddenly got narrower and made overflowing the order of the day when storms hit home. Then there is the tunnel that takes the water from the watercourse passing through the Marsa Sports Ground to Jetties Wharf from underneath the eight-lane Aldo Moro Road. The road above is supported by several concrete pillars that are quite close to one another. It has resulted that for endless years these columns have been serving as a cobweb for reeds, rubbish and other material that was ending up stuck in between them as they were carried down by the water. This material was blocking the passage of water. It was only now, after last September's shock, that v-shaped metal sheets have been fixed to the front pillars and the spaces between the columns closed to ease the flow of water and reduce the possibility of rubbish blocking the watercourse.
The question crops up automatically: What were the civil service's architects and civil engineers doing in the past years? Shouldn't they be held accountable for this lack of proper action? Minister Zammit smiles at my remarks but stops short of commenting.
We walked along the 1.6km stretch passing through the Marsa Sports Ground where the existent watercourse has been widened, at certain spots even doubled. In order for the work to be carried out, the drainage system and electricity cables had to be unearthed and passed via an alternative route. A two-arched bridge that was creating a bottleneck is having a third arch added to it soon. Meanwhile, the base of the watercourse is being lined with concrete to facilitate the flow of storm water as well as its cleaning.
As sweating workers greeted the Minister with a "Bongu Ministru" or "Bongu Ninu" (depending on their political sympathies, I guess) Mr Zammit explained how a new, stronger retaining wall is being built on both sides of the watercourse. While the old walls were vertical, the new ones are being built at an angle ('bit-talut', in Maltese). This system makes the channel grow wider as you go up, hence increasing the volume of water it can take. Besides, slanting walls are aesthetically much more acceptable than vertical ones. Have you ever been on a river bank abroad? Haven't you noticed that that's the way walls lining watercourses have been built for ages? But not in Malta.
In the meantime, the sea at Jetties Wharf has been dredged to eliminate obstacles to the free flow of water into the sea. The valleys leading to the Qormi/Marsa catchment area – Wied il-Kbir, Wied ic-Cawsli, Wied Qirda, Wied Xkora, Wied l-Isqof, Wied tal-Hzejjen and Wied ta' Hal Mula - are also being cleaned up. Furthermore, culverts or passageways channelling water to the main watercourses are being built or re-discovered. For instance, a channel has just been dug out to rid the road passing in front of the Turkish Cemetery and alongside the Marsa Golf Course of the waters that drown it year in year out. A second, relatively short passageway, catching the water from the fields behind the petrol station in Aldo Moro Road, was found to be full of earth and rubbish and had consequently disappeared, further contributing to the possibility of flooding.
"Fifty-five tons of earth have been trucked away from this passageway," said Mr Zammit. "They finished cleaning it only yesterday." But as we turn to look at the ‘clean’ watercourse, we find that someone had already dumped a number of used tyres into it during the previous night.
"It is a pity that while the Government spends public funds on these important projects, irresponsible individuals keep preventing the public from getting the full results," the Minister complained. "Everything comes at a cost. Money we have to keep spending on clean-ups could easily be spent on something else."
The flood prevention works that are being undertaken at the Qormi/Marsa and Burmarrad/Salini watercourses will be costing the Government Lm1 million, Lm 450,000 of which will come from the European Union's Solidarity Fund. All the work is being carried out excellently by Government employees.
We did not have time to visit the Burmarrad/Salini project as well… thank God. I had another interview scheduled soon after I finished this one and was putting my lateral thinking skills to task about what I could do to avoid presenting myself at the next interviewee's office with my sandals and feet covered with dust smelling of sewage.
Mr Zammit told me that works on the northern catchment area were not as advanced as they were in the South. He pointed out that the watercourse that used to pass through the area known as Ghajn Rihana and leading to the Salini salt pens had over the years been levelled out and used for agricultural purposes. It was not surprising, therefore, that the plain that has replaced the valley is ending up flooded. To add insult to injury, a deep channel which was - in the past - used both for the filling of the salt pens with seawater and for the channelling of storm water to the sea - known as 'is-sokkorsu' - has also ended up filled with earth and mud. Part of it has already been cleared. Meanwhile, clean up operations of the watercourse have begun at the Ghajn Rihana area.
Allow me to be frank. As much as I was glad to see these projects being undertaken, I am afraid that this will prove to be simply a case of management by crisis as a direct effect of last year's panic. I asked the minister to give me a guarantee that maintenance works on these watercourses will be undertaken periodically from now on. Otherwise, these Lm1 that are being spent would be simply money flushed down the drain. Mr Zammit replies that a team of employees at the Flooding Section of the Works Division have been assigned the responsibility of ensuring that the country's watercourses are maintained to ensure that floods are prevented. In fact, he said, as winter approaches culverts have already been cleaned up and vegetation that could block the flow of storm water cleared.
Let the thunderstorms come. Let us keep our fingers crossed that the history of flooding in these areas really becomes water under the bridge.
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