‘No reason to exclude us from bidding for Ghadira road EIA tender’ – Adrian Mallia
James Debono
The consultancy firm which conducted a study for the Seabank Hotel four years ago on the relocation of the road at Ghadira, to another one passing behind the BirdLife nature reserve, could end up conducting the new study for government’s own proposed relocation of the Ghadira road.
Adrian Mallia, director of ADI consultants, has said the company’s past involvement in the study commissioned by hotelier Silvio Debono should not preclude them from bidding for the tender to carry out an environmental impact assessment (EIA) for the government.
The EIA will assess the impact of government’s plan to reroute the Ghadira road behind the Seabank Hotel and the nature reserve. Transport Minister Austin Gatt has made it clear that if the EIA concludes that the road should not be relocated, he would drop the proposal.
BirdLife has criticised Gatt for presenting the document commissioned by the Seabank as ‘evidence’ to prove his contention that the existing road is causing the erosion of the Ghadira beach.
Debono himself has openly admitted that he stands to gain from the road project, which will benefit from European funds from the TEN-T (Trans-European) network.
One of the three proposals presented by Austin Gatt is identical to the Seabank’s proposal studied by ADI, which included a tunnel passing right through the garigue plateau behind the Danish Village holiday complex, connected to an elevated road overlooking the nature reserve.
“We are not the ministry’s consultants and we only met the minister ten days ago after being called by him for a meeting,” Adrian Mallia told MaltaToday. “We are not here to defend the government’s position. So if there is a tendering process there is no reason to exclude ourselves from it.”
The presence of Mallia in a press conference with Austin Gatt this week, confirming that the EIA will be done by public tender, was slammed by Labour environment spokesperson Leo Brincat: “One should ask how ethical it is to have the consultant who drafted a study on behalf of a private developer who will be benefiting from the project, sitting next to the Minister.”
Adrian Mallia is a former MEPA official who headed its environmental management unit between 1994 and 2003. The company has conducted the EIAs for several government projects, namely the aborted Xaghra l-Hamra golf course, MEPA’s studies on artificial islands, and the replenishing of the St George’s bay in Paceville. ADI also conducted the EIA for Smart City.
In the press conference Mallia said he had objected to the plans proposed by the Seabank, which included a yacht marina in Ghadira. “Since these were unacceptable from an environmental point of view I told them that they had no chance of getting them approved by MEPA.”
Mallia claims he only accepted to conduct this study when Seabank dropped these “unacceptable proposals.”
Gatt’s proposals
Last Thursday, Mallia teamed up with Austin Gatt during a presentation of government’s three options for the relocation of the Ghadira road, namely: passing a new road behind the Danish Village connected with a viaduct bridge overlooking the nature reserve; the widening of an existing country lane further north, also connected to a viaduct bridge; and the proposal to pass a tunnel beneath the central garigue plateau.
The latter option had been initially excluded, due to fears that it could negatively affect the water aquifer, although Mallia says there are pipelines leading to the Cumnija sewage plant constructed at a greater depth than the proposed road.
Gatt justified Mallia’s presence in the press conference as an attempt to back up his earlier claim that the Ghadira beach is threatened by erosion and could disappear if the existing road is not relocated.
“When I made this claim I admitted that the government had no studies to confirm that the beach needs replenishing. Subsequently I was informed of the study conducted by Adrian Mallia and I wanted him to share his studies with NGOs and the press.”
But when asked directly by MaltaToday, Mallia refused to substantiate Gatt’s claim that in the absence of the new road, the entire beach would disappear entirely –describing similar claims as “sensational”.
He acknowledged that his study did not include scientific measurements on the rate of erosion of the beach. Mallia made it clear that the road is not the only cause of beach erosion and that a sea wall constructed near the Tunny Net restaurant had altered sea currents, contributing to the loss of sand.
However he expressed agreement with Gatt’s contention that the existing road is impeding the movement of sand from the beach to sand dunes near the nature reserve. He also warned that the problem will aggravate because of global warming.
Mallia said more studies were needed to established whether BirdLife’s claims that the existing road acted as a barrier that protected the nature reserve from the sea, were true.
But he said engineering works already exist to prevent the flooding of the reserve. “The reserve was originally a marshland and included a number of salt pans which were protected from flooding as the water was channelled through the operation of a system of dams.”
He argued that if the road is removed, the beach would be enlarged in a way that the distance between the sea and the reserve will also increase.
BirdLife protests
BirdLife’s executive director Tolga Temuge has insisted that the government should prove that relocating the existing road is necessary, before considering the project’s options.
He criticised the government for taking a “political decision” and that the government should first explain why the existing road has to be removed.
“By insisting on the need to reroute the road without any scientific study to justify its claim the government is showing that it has a prejudiced objective,” Temuge said. “First show me that there is a need to replace the existing road and only then should the government embark on choosing between the three different options being proposed.”
Temuge added that ADI’s 2004 assessment of the Seabank proposal was not a scientific survey. Temuge said that in a meeting held between government officials and NGO representatives, Adrian Mallia agreed that the Seabank study had not been a scientific survey focusing on the coastal geomorphology of Ghadira bay and that proper studies were needed.
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