Another expert FAA didn't consult
Environmental scientist Alan Deidun is standing for election to the European Parliament on the Nationalist Party ticket. He has been a prime mover in the pro-environmental lobby for the last few years. Here’s what he had to say about the FAA’s methods on the St John’s museum extension, excerpted from an interview in Malta Today yesterday.
On the recent saga surrounding the retracted application to extend St John’s Co-Cathedral, Deidun insisted that before the project was stopped, an environmental impact assessment (EIA) should have been carried out.
“Without committing myself to whether or not I agree with the extension, I think we should have allowed the process to be completed in full. You cannot decide a priori, before studies are carried out. I would have allowed the scientific people, the professionals, to conclude their studies,” he said, almost echoing Richard Cachia Caruana’s own statement after the prime announced that he agreed with the archbishop to shelf (sic) the project in the public interest.
And that’s an example of skewed interviewing for you. You quote the person, and when he says something that doesn’t fit in with your agenda, you tack on a remark to undermine him. Alan Deidun’s words did not echo those of Richard Cachia Caruana, but the expressed sentiments of a whole host of professionals, of politicians, and of clear-thinking people, including myself. If there is a democratic institutional process, the democratic institutional process should be respected, because this is not a banana republic. Decisions must be based on information, not speculation. Fortunately, Deidun has learned how to press home a point, during years of writing about and campaigning on environmental matters, even though his interviewer tried again to get him to back the FAA.
The environmental lobby group Flimkien Ghal Ambjent Ahjar, led by Astrid Vella, insisted that MEPA’s heritage expert had already pointed out the dangers, and the professionals had already opposed the development, thus ruling out the need of an EIA. “I have a lot of respect for MEPA’s heritage expert, but his opinion should have been further substantiated by an EIA – which is carried out by a consortium of professionals.”
On this issue, FAA had pointed out that a similar project in Mosta was immediately retracted and it had not qualified for an EIA. This precedent had made Astrid Vella wonder what pressure was put onto government for an EIA to be carried out for the St John’s Co-Cathedral extension project. “I am not necessarily in favour of the project,” Deidun said. “If an EIA would have indicated dangers brought out by this extension, I would have been the first to speak out about it. Unfortunately, although the majority of environmentalists are genuine, some others are being latched upon by opportunists of all types – especially by those politicians who are having a field-day on these people’s backs.”
Is he referring to Joseph Muscat, who pushed to discuss this issue in parliament, or to those PN backbenchers who seemed to oppose the project? “It happens on both sides”, he said. “I am not saying Astrid was wrong, but she needs to be careful. She should have taken a stance once all the studies were out. But in this case, political influence tainted the intentions of the environmental lobby.”
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I happen to know Dr.Alan Deidun as a very level headed person since the days when he attended my Biology lessons. He will be an asset to our country in the EU. He is a very objective person who has no problem in calling it as he sees it. Things should be done logically. First you come out with an idea, then you see if it works and any dangers associated with it.You listen to experts, and then make what is called an ‘informed decision’. Projects such as St. John’s extension are to be debated publicly of course but the decsion cannot be preempted by emotional uninformed agenda. I feel we have been robbed of an opportunity to see if we could have a decent tailor-made place to exhibit the tapestries. The greatest error in this saga was that the process was hijacked midway, before it came to its natural conclusion. What happened is akin to a defence lawyer muttering loudly in court that his client is innocent and the judge is so fed-up he decides to acquit and stop the jury before the other side makes its case heard. Our country deserves better.
Now we’re seeing a number of level headed persons, like Alan Deidun and Godfrey Grima – I know them both, who are worried about the way the whole St John’s Co-Cathedral museum saga was manipulated. Din l-Art Helwa was waiting for the EIA. The Church Commission for the Environment was also waiting for an EIA before pronouncing itself. And one should also stress the fact that MEPA’s own Cultural Heritage Advisory Committee agreed to give its final decision after studying the outcomes of the EIA.
NO COMMENT
Corriere della Sera 4 Marzo 2009
[Daphne – Please post the link, not the story. Thanks.]
Forget Corriere della Sera. This comes straight from the mouth of the Mayor of Cologne
http://www.thelocal.de/national/20090304-17793.html
“This was a ‘foreseeable catastrophe’.” Eberhard Illner.
hmmm…. so they were digging underneath existing buildings in Cologne… Good thing NO ONE was intending to do anything similar here……
The phenomenon of buildings collapsing during the building or extension of metro lines – and sometimes even after that – seems not to be that rare at all. In 2003, a 6 storey building collapsed in Shangai above the constuction site of a local metro line. Work was going on 20m underground. In 2002 a building situated directly above the metro tunnel in Newcastle collapsed. In 2004, a metro construction site collapsed in Guangzhou, leaving 100 people homeless after their homes were totally or partially destroyed……and now this happened in Cologne.
Moggy, when you consider how many tunnels there must be round the world, the list of collapsed buildings you mention is extremely short: four buildings in seven years and two of them in China.
@ Antoine: I’m just providing information for those who wish to read it.
@Antoine Vella
What happened in Cologne shatters the arguments brought in this blog that excavations do no harm to standing structures.
[Daphne – No, it doesn’t – no more than the FACT that women are not bad drivers is shattered by one bad woman driver who mows down a party of schoolchildren. Fact: excavations do not harm standing structures. Fact: the occasional CARELESS excavation may do so. Your illogical reasoning is akin to claiming that all buildings are necessarily unsafe and all people should live in caves because sometimes an apartment block collapses in India. It’s so damned obvious that Maltese schools, with one or two exceptions, train children NOT to think, and that Tal-Muzew compounds the problem.]
Why do we keep talking about digging tunnels under buildings when the issue is digging a hole in a square?
[Daphne – Because that’s what Astrid Vella told them.]
I’ve known Dr Deidun long enough to say that our country needs people like him in order to move forward and protect what is rightfully ours. Our natural heritage is slowly withering away and we need people with strong, honest values and a reliable scientific background to safeguard it. He will be an asset to Malta in the EU and this is our opportunity as environmentalists to have our say in the European Parliament.