James Debono The Malta Environment and Planning Authority is dismissing any suggestion that Enemalta’s chief technical officer Peter Grima, had misled the MEPA board on the same day that it approved the new power station.
MEPA contends it has yet to issue a ‘pollution control permit’ for the export of 15 containers of toxic ash every week from Delimara, even if it has already green-lit the controversial 144MW extension that will run on heavy fuel oil (HFO). By issuing the outline permit, MEPA has already agreed in principle with the use of HFO, which will produce 30 tonnes of toxic ash every day.
But it will only request the signed contracts for the disposal of this waste when issuing an integrated pollution prevention control permit (IPPC) – which is still to be determined.
The National Audit Office’s report says Grima told MEPA that Enemalta had entered into a contract for the export of bottomash from Delimara. It later transpired that this contract only covered flyash from Marsa power station.
The MEPA spokesperson said that since MEPA will tackle the issue of how the toxic waste will be disposed at a later stage, the “information” given by Grima during the public hearing had “no direct bearing on the decision taken by the MEPA board” last January.
The outline permit MEPA issued “only established the principle for the extension of the Delimara Power Station”, the spokesperson said and operational issues will only be discussed when the IPCC permit is issued.
But this means MEPA approved the extension without any consideration of one of its most significant impacts: the disposal of 15 containers of hazardous waste every week, either on a ship berthed at Delimara, or from the Malta Freeport terminal.
The Environment Impact Assessment states that had Enemalta opted for gas or diesel, the amount of toxic bottom ash would have been negligible. The EIA warns that failure to export this vast quantity of waste in time would cause “complete or partial switching-off of the plant.”
MEPA auditor Joe Falzon, has now told the authority to seek legal advice to establish whether Grima’s information had a bearing on the decision to issue the outline permit.
“If it turns out that the information was incorrect and had a bearing on MEPA’s decision… the outline permit can be revoked,” Falzon told MaltaToday.
Falzon said that providing incorrect information to the MEPA board was “a very serious matter.”
The NAO report revealed that Grima had stated in the MEPA public hearing that the contract for bottomash from the Delimara power station had already been signed. The NAO later found out that Enemalta had only signed a contract for the export of fly ash from the Marsa power station.
When confronted by the NAO with the fact that the MEPA board had been interested solely in the Delimara arrangements, Grima denied having told the board that Enemalta had such an arrangement for the Delimara toxic waste. Labour MP Evarist Bartolo, who was present during the public hearing, declared that “Grima wanted us to understand that Enemalta had signed a contract to dispose of toxic waste from the Delimara power station overseas.”
The NAO has also questioned how the EIA was carried out after the contract with BWSC was signed and not before, describing this procedure as risky since MEPA could impose new conditions on the project not envisioned in the contract.
Joe Falzon contends that “if MEPA is strictly professional the fact that a contract was already signed should not have any bearing on its decisions… it is in no way obliged to adhere to previously signed contracts and may well impose conditions which go beyond the scope of any such contract.”
MEPA’s spokesperson said that a proposal for such a highly technical plant cannot be assessed without sufficiently detailed knowledge of the type of technology that will be used. “Otherwise the EIA risks being a hypothetical exercise,” the spokesperson said.
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