Letters | Sunday, 06 December 2009

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Objections field against Portomaso’s new extension

For your newspaper to better appreciate the implications of the planning application to build the 50 units in front of the St Julian’s historic entrenchment wall, and on the site of a protected ecological zone, I am enclosing a technical letter submitted to MEPA on behalf of a group of objectors against application PA4096/08 giving detailed planning reasons why this permit should not be approved.
I am sure that you will agree that approval by MEPA of this application permit will be scandalous, even though the site has been included by MEPA and government in the 2006 local plan as a development zone, already a scandal in itself, granted that the site contains unique ecological species and a schedule and protected wall.
After all, the inclusion of the site as a development zone in the Local Plan does not mean that permits must be issued; on the other hand it is MEPA’s obligation, once its attention has been drawn to the facts, to redress the erroneous inclusion of the development zone in the local plan, by refusing the application and protecting the ecological zone, the entrenchment wall and the right of public passage. MEPA should then amend the Local Plan by making the whole area a scheduled ecological zone and not allowing any development there.

Ingrid Serge Ratcliffe
Portomaso, St Julian’s

In 1996, MEPA issued a permit for the redevelopment of the Hilton Grounds into a hotel and residential project and yacht marina. The permit excluded any development from a part of the site between the foreshore and the protected bastion that formed part of the old Fort Spinola. This part of the site was declared a protected ecological zone due to the presence of unique ecological plants and species.
In fact, the permit required the developers to fence off the ecological site during construction, with the site being reopened to the public on completion of the project. The developers were obliged to affix a notice on site declaring this fact, and the notice was duly fixed in place.
The developers of Portomaso are now proposing to also develop the ecological site, in the process eliminating the only remaining rare species that remain in the Maltese islands of the ‘crystal plant’ and of the ‘wedgefoot grass’, both identified during the environmental impact assessment (EIA) carried out in 1995 prior to the issuing of the building permit by MEPA. It is relevant to remark that all the approved permit drawings identified the ecological zone as well as an adjacent public passage connecting Spinola Road to the yacht marina as areas where no physical development could take place.
The issue by MEPA of a building permit as applied for under PA4096/08 would mean that MEPA will be authorising the destruction of the rare ecological species identified by the EIA carried out as part of the original application process. It would mean that MEPA will be authorising the destruction of the species that it is legally obliged to protect. It would mean that the ecological zone that the developer was obliged to protect by fencing off during the original construction will now be converted to more apartments with the wanton destruction of the unique and rare ecological species.
It would also mean that the public access from Spinola Road to the yacht marina, also a requirement of the original permit as a planning gain for the public, would no longer be available. Surely MEPA has no option but to reject application PA4096/08.

Maria Ross
Portomaso, St Julian’s

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