Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1512115
maltatoday | SUNDAY • 27 MARCH 2022 OPINION 3 LETTERS & EDITORIAL maltatoday | SUNDAY • 26 NOVEMBER 2023 Mikiel Galea Letters & Clarifications Don't make the same mistakes as Rome LAST summer the images of Rome invaded by garbage went around the world. It wasn't the first time and may- be it won't even be the last. How is it possible that one of the most famous, admired and visited cities in the world, the capital city of a European country and the centre of Christianity, has sunk that low? Until the early 1980s the waste treat- ment system operating in Rome was at the forefront. It was praised by one of the world leaders of environmental movement, Barry Commoner, who indi- cated it as an example to follow. What went wrong? It's extremely simple, Rome made a tragic mistake. It took the apparently most convenient and cheap path. It relied on the huge Malagrotta landfill, the largest in Europe, not far from Fiu- micino airport and the sea. Once it was an abandoned quarry, today it is a hill of almost 90 metres high, more or less the size of 300 football fields. It looks like one of the hills in the area, but there is an enormous difference: under a thin layer of ground lies an immense mass of waste accumulated over 30 years, to- gether with millions of cubic metres of leachate and biogas. Sooner or later landfills run out, how- ever big they may be, and if an effective alternative for waste disposal has not been built in time 'chickens come home to roost'. This is what happened last summer. That's not all. Ten years after its clo- sure in 2013, the Malagrotta landfill is still creating problems. Work for se- curing it and stop pollution will begin next January, it will cost around €250 million and last three years. The buried waste will not be removed. It will re- main forever where it is now, as a mon- ument to the blindness of national and local politics. Thanks to the Malagrotta landfill Rome's council administration saved a lot of money over the years, but now it has to spend much more than it saved; around €7.5 billion on a system of plants for the treatment and disposal of its waste, one of which is to build a controversial waste-to-energy plant capable of burning 600 thousand tonnes of waste per year - around 40% of the overall yearly production of the city. If the ambitious system to capture and store at sea the CO2 produced, by the waste-to-energy plant does not work (there are no plants like this in the world) Rome will pay even more dearly for its mistakes, because of fines the European Union will soon impose. A huge economic risk that a prudent administration should try to avoid, but relentlessly will have to cover. I spoke about these topics at the International Applied Social Sciences Congress held in Malta, last week and organised by Prof. Simon Grima of the University of Malta and Prof. Ercan Özen of the Usak University (Turkey). It was for me an opportunity to observe the significant changes that have been happening in Malta over the last 10 years, probably related to the fast demo- graphic growth. Such transformations usually boost the economic system, especially the construction sector. They also open up problems, like the necessity to adapt the waste management and disposal system. I wish that a future conference will give politicians and academics the op- portunity for a public confrontation on these topics. Malta, one of the most pre- cious pearls of the Mediterranean Sea, doesn't have to make mistakes, for the sake of present and future generations. Andrea Imperia Sapienza University of Rome