PRESS RELEASE

7th September 2013

Din l-Art Helwa has received the draft Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for the new gas-fired power plant at Delimara for review. It has pointed out to MEPA that this Environmental Impact Assessment cannot be considered complete until further details of this major project are made available for assessment.

An Environmental Impact Assessment should ensure that both the authorities and the public are fully aware of the environmental implications of a project before a decision is made. It must assess all predicted significant impacts of a proposal, and examine how each adverse impact may be mitigated and reduced. Din l-Art Helwa maintains that this will not be possible until more details of the project are presented.

Din l-Art Helwa finds that the EIS report is not comprehensive since the consultants engaged to carry out the studies do not yet have the full details of the proposed project. The EIS report itself acknowledges that, as the operator of the new power plant has not yet been selected, the level of detail available for assessment is limited.

For example, the report does not contain satisfactory information about the amount of land reclamation, excavation and dredging that will be required, and some of the consultants themselves express a low level of confidence in their own predictions due to a lack of data. The report does not evaluate any technological alternatives, and does not present a clear comparative assessment of the environmental impacts of the three proposed layouts.

Din l-Art Helwa’s comments on the draft EIS can be viewed here DelimaraCCGTEISdraft1DLHcomments