Inquiry into 2017 Sant' Antnin recycling plant fire still ongoing

A magisterial inquiry into a large fire which engulfed the Sant' Antnin recycling plant is still ongoing, it has emerged.

The fire had destroyed the facility's waste sorting shed in May 2017.

Three years on, the inquiry has not yet been concluded, and it is not known when it might be finalised, Justice Minister Edward Zammit Lewis said in Parliament on Tuesday.

Zammit Lewis, who was replying to a parliamentary question from PN MP Claudette Buttigieg, said that only the inquiring magistrate could establish when the inquiry would be closed.

"...Nobody else has the authority under the law to establish the date by which it has to be concluded. It is therefore not possible for me to give an indication of a date, as request," Zammit Lewis said.

The fire was of such a magnitude that it had taken Civil Protection Department personnel almost a day to extinguish it, with the police, army and a number of NGOS also having called in to assist.

The blaze had started in the plant's Refuse Derived Fuels (RDF) section, the part of the facility where recycle material is stored and processed.

Then environment minister José Herrera had said that the storage of RDF materials involved a certain degree of risk, and the way it was handled had been inherited by WasteServ.

Herrera had said that the hazard involved was one of the reasons the plant was being dismantled and moved to an engineered landfill in Maghtab - where waste is currently being separated using a manual procedure until a new recycling plant in the same area is completed.