MEPA’s idea of Environmental Justice

 

 

At a time when MEPA has been taking some sensible decisions, it was extremely disappointing to see the Planning Directorate recommend approval of a block of apartments that, if built, would wall up the windows of the block behind it.

Flimkien ghal Ambjent Ahjar and the St. Julian’s Residents’ Association maintain that the MEPA Planning Directorate resorted to every loophole in planning policies in order to justify a seven-storey building in a three storey area. The NGOs cannot accept the following:

– MEPA measuring the building from the top of a public flight of stairs just 5 feet wide, claiming that this is a frontage. Technical dictionaries define ‘frontage’ as: “the façade or the front part of a piece of property.” The building is registered on Spinola Square which is where its entrances are to be found. It should be measured for the Local Plan limit of three floors plus penthouse from Spinola Square otherwise MEPA will be breaking the very laws it was created to defend.

– MEPA’s Planning Directorate is overlooking the fact that these are MAXIMUM heights, which do not give the developer the automatic right to the full limit which can be brought down if the requirements of the area indicate a lower height is preferable.

– MEPA is consistent in ignoring of the 1895 Police Sanitary Law which states that a building adjacent to a street/alley cannot be higher than three times the width of the street. In this case the passage of steps is 1.5m wide, therefore maximum permissible height is 4.5m instead of which the building façade on that side was approved at four storeys, approximately 12m, stepped back to seven. If granted this would create a narrow canyon echoing with noise from nearby bars.

– The Planning Directorate is using Guidance 2007 16.1 policy to grant an extra floor, even though the document specifically excludes Sliema and St Julian’s.

– The Planning report records the fact that views from the Parish Square are to be protected by MEPA, but proceeds to approve that the views be built up.

– While objectors are obliged to make submissions no later than ten days before a hearing, the architect of this project has been allowed to submit new plans just three days before the hearing. These new plans retain the overall building height at six floors.

– MEPA Policy and Design Guidance regulations state that all new development should create a good quality internal and external environment, maintain or improve the existing quality of the environment, contribute positively to the local environment, create a distinctive overall sense of place and be compatible with its context and the surrounding area. This project was recommended for approval even though it violates all of those clauses.

How could the Planning Directorate claim that a seven-storey building maintains the good visual integrity of the area in which it is located” when it will create an aesthetic blot on the landscape, ruining Spinola as similar high-rise blocks ruined Xemxija?

The NGOs point out that contrary to what the developer’s architect incorrectly claimed, the windows of the flats behind the proposed project are not illegal and cannot be sealed off, leaving much of their property in darkness. These homes, which the residents have made sacrifices to buy and which are their life investment, would suddenly become uninhabitable and unsellable. Until MEPA implements the spirit of the law, rather than the letter of its loopholes, there can be no true MEPA Reform. Is this MEPA’s idea of environmental justice?