James Debono Munxar’s mayor Joe Sultana has denied any connection between a road his local council illegally widened and covered with concrete, and a site in Tas-Sanap being proposed for a fireworks factory.
The construction of the factory was rejected by the planning authority in 2001 because the path leading to the site could not cater for increased vehicular traffic, and because widening it would have had an adverse environmental impact on the area.
The surrounding area of Tas-Sanap is a Special Protection Area (SPA) and a rural conservation area.
But then in 2007, the same path along Tas-Sanap’s picturesque cliffs was illegally widened and covered by a layer of concrete by the Munxar council.
The path in fact leads directly to the proposed fireworks site.
Since then, the 20 July Pyrotechnic Society has filed a new application for the fireworks factory.
Mayor Joe Sultana denied any connection between the road and the fireworks factory application. “The application is a private development, while the widening of the road is a project of the local council,” Sultana said.
Munxar’s mayor has also refused to pronounce himself against the application for the fireworks factor, insisting that the council has yet to discuss this issue.
The council had already missed the 21 December deadline to submit its objections to the fireworks factory. Sultana said the matter will be discussed in the next council meeting.
When pressed for his personal opinion, the mayor insisted that he would not pronounce himself before the matter is discussed by the council.
A spokesman for Alternattiva Demokratika in Munxar, Michael Bajada, is calling on the council to take a stand against the proposed factory. “The council is duty bound to inform Munxar residents on these plans and cannot remain silent on this issue.”
According to Bajada the development of a fireworks factory will cause further environmental deterioration to the damage already caused by the widening of a path on the Sanap cliffs.
MEPA’s development control commission has already said the illegal road was “very dangerous for passers-by” as the edge is sloping steeply toward the sea and lacks a boundary wall.
The illegal road was denounced by Alternattiva Demokratika in 2007, shortly followed by a MEPA an enforcement order.
Then, two days before the Sanap cliffs were declared a Special Protection Area (SPA) by MEPA, the local council filed an application to sanction the illegal road.
The mayor claimed the road was in a disastrous state, and that farmers who used the road were at risk. “When it rained it was only possible to walk on the side of the road. I can assure you that residents who like to walk away from traffic were very angry when the works were stopped,” Sultana told MaltaToday in 2007.
But the new road has made it possible for cars in a previously inaccessible area. Despite the outrage among residents, the mayor still applied to sanction the illegality.
But he has since received an unfavourable recommendation from MEPA’s planning directorate and the DCC, which deemed the use of concrete as “not acceptable”.
It also warned that parts of the new road posed a public safety risk. The board has asked the council to present more acceptable plans and has deferred this case.
Previous applications
Back in 1999 the Munxar council opposed the development of a fireworks factory on the same site.
It collected a petition from Munxar residents opposing this development. The Munxar parish priest was also opposed to the development.
The council said the factory posed a potential risk, referring to a huge fireworks factory explosion in the vicinity of the proposed site that killed two persons.
The application, presented by Carmel Curmi, was turned down twice; first by the Development Control Commission, and than by the MEPA appeals aboard.
Another application to reconstruct the other factory destroyed in an explosion was also turned down by MEPA in 2004.
In December 2007 another application to build a factory in the same area was presented by the 20 July Pyrotechnic Society. The application was withdrawn, only to be presented a year later.
MaltaToday’s repeated attempts to contact representatives of the pyrotechnic society were unsuccessful.
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