Letters | Sunday, 11 January 2009

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Violence of the Church on the Environment

I saw the interview that the newspaper Il-Gens did to the Archpriest of the Nadur Parish on the cemetery that is being built, but which has a pending appeal against it at Mepa. (P.S. Mepa is taking its time to decide by which time the cemetery will be ready) I sent this letter to Il-Gens twice, but they have not published it so I wish to reply to the interview here.
I wish to answer to this interview and ask some questions:
1. If it is really true that the Church had nothing to hide, why didn’t it let the Environmental Commission of the Church to say if it approves of the cemetery?
2. Is it a criterion to say that the site to be chosen could not have been private property? The cemetery could have been built on private property by negotiating with the owner and paying him. The Church is going to have a return of hundred of thousands of maltese liri. So there would have been enough money to buy private property. The owner of the land in front of the old cemetery wanted to sell or exchange the land with other property.
3. In the interview it was said that a layer of concrete was given underneath the graves so that the water does not go out. But this has already cracked. It was proposed that this layer is covered with waterproofing but it was not done. Although even this would not keep that some day the water go out and contaminate the spring water underneath.
4. This is violence of the Church on the natural environment, both on its visual aspect because this area was still not developed and violence on agricultural land irrigated with thousands of gallons of water every day. We already had a similar case. The old Nadur cemetery was built on a spring and nobody thereafter drunk from it or irrigated with its water. The Water Services Corporation did not give its go ahead for the new cemetery to be built near a bore hole. So the cemetery would have contaminated water deep down in a bore hole but not spring water caught in fissures 20 metres down. The Church should have given an example and acted in another way..
5. In the interview it was said that it is not true that with the excavation the spring water of Ghajn Qasab came out white. But this is true. I am sending you a photograph to show you this. You cannot reason against facts.
6. According to tests done on the spring water it was found that the water is good for drinking except for the level of nitrates (EU standards say tha tap water should have not more than 0.05 g/litre and in the spring water of Ghajn Qasab the nitrate level is’ 0.13 g/litre. And this could have happened because a farmer put more nitrate fertilizer in the soil than necessary. Now the case will be different because if water comes out of the cemetery, it would have poisonous substances in it like formaldehyde; and water which now is almost good for drinking would not be even good for irrigation.
7. There are other places where the cemetery could have been done. If it is not possible to be done in Nadur, then the Santa Marija Cemetery has many empty graves and so it is not a problem where to lay to rest the dead.
I am still asking the Church to withdraw the permit and stop the works on the cemetery. A mistake is not hidden by another but by remedying it. I thank you for the space you gave me in your newspaper.

Joe Portelli
Nadur

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