When ‘no’ really means ‘yes’

Black smoke emitted by the Marsa power station.

Enemalta’s denial that the Marsa Power Station is the source of the ‘black dust’ takes us back to the time of the Soviet leadership and its calculated deceit on the dangers of radioactive particles following the Chernobyl explosion.

The Politburo refused to acknowledge scientific fact and chose instead to mislead the public, exposing people to the hazards of radiation. Enemalta has adopted the same course of action, contradicting the conclusions of yet another report stating that the Marsa power station is the source of the ‘black dust’ – a misnomer for the pollution emitted by the plant.

The pattern of denial is the same. It is intended to evade responsibility for the corporation’s failure to effectively address a problem that has affected thousands of citizens since it first occurred in 1996.

We did not need another report to state the obvious. The commissioning of the study was a tactic to win time until the power station’s closure. The report’s conclusions simply confirmed the studies that came before it.

As far back as the year 2000, a report by British environmental company AEA Technology Environment (known as the Stacey report) had found traces of nickel and vanadium in dust collected from Fgura and concluded that the pollution was “likely” to be caused by emissions from the Marsa power station.

If Enemalta truly believed that the plant was not the source of the problem, why did it feel compelled to say “every effort is being made…to shut down the Marsa power station as soon as possible”?

Enemalta has the audacity to contradict the conclusions of the report because the corporation has been allowed to fail over and over again and it has never been held accountable.

The question is not whether the plant is the source of the pollution, but who will be held responsible for the failure to shut it down? The plant’s closure has been promised since 1987, and more than two decades later the country remains dependent on a World War II relic for its energy supply at a significant financial, human and environmental cost.

Enemalta’s Generation Plan 2006-2015 acknowledged that the Marsa power station “contributes both to a high fuel bill as well as environmental impact”. It is absolutely unacceptable that citizens are forced to tolerate polluting technology abandoned by other countries decades ago.

When Malta joined the EU in 2004 the Marsa power station was granted a temporary lifeline of 20,000 operational hours after which it had to be shut down. The time limit expired earlier this year.

An article I wrote in 2009 had warned that the deadline the government was giving for the plant’s shut down in 2015 was too optimistic because of the rate at which the Marsa power plant was using up its operational hours. Austin Gatt’s ministry, responsible for Enemalta at the time, had refused to acknowledge the facts even when a European Commission environment spokesman contradicted the ministry’s explanations on operational time limits.

The government insisted the plant would be shut down in 2015, intent on misleading the public then just as it is doing now when stating that talks are ongoing with the European Commission to get an extension on the plant’s closure. Environment Commissioner Janez Potocnik has made it abundantly clear that this would not be possible. Malta will now have to face the repercussions of failing to meet the EU deadline.

It is the latest in a long list of failed promises. The mismanagement of the energy sector has led to a situation that threatens one of the country’s most basic requirements – a reliable supply of electricity. The challenges ahead are enormous.

The public needs some reassurance that those charged with overcoming these challenges are competent and capable of living up to this responsibility rather than being subjected to continued cover-ups of the real scale of the problem and its repercussions.

For more on the subject: From rhetoric to reality.

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Category: Energy