Court upholds enforcement against illegal Palumbo waste disposal

A Court of Appeal presided by Chief Justice Mark Chetcuti has confirmed a decision by the Planning Authority on an enforcement order against the Palumbo Shipyard in Bormla for dumping of hazardous waste.

The judge threw out Palumbo’s appeal against the PA’s environment and planning review tribunal, which upheld the PA order of 2016.

The appeals case was filed back in 2023, when Palumbo appealed the EPRT’s decision to uphold the PA’s enforcement order.

The PA’s order had been issued only after a two-year investigation on the dumping of hazardous waste under a concrete platform, erected way back in 2012 at the shipyard in Bormla.

The PA accused the shipyard of creating a “landfill” without necessary permits and the dumping of waste under the concrete platform in violation of the law. Palumbo was also reprimanded for not taking any action to transport the waste for authorised treatment.

The Environment Protection Act expressly bans unauthorised landfills.

The PA’s enforcement order against Palumbo was issued a full 21 months after enforcement officers collected samples from the site in 2014, and after MaltaToday had revealed the conclusion of the investigation into the illegally buried waste.

Palumbo has always insisted that the concrete bed had been laid on wasteland, and any waste deposited there had been placed there before the company took over the yard.  It also claimed to have cleaned the area before the concrete platform was laid.

In September 2014 the PA announced it had started to investigate the Palumbo site following a tip-off that quantities of grit blasting material were buried in the concrete foundations. From initial investigations it resulted that the grit-blasting waste, which is generated by Palumbo’s operations, had been used in the foundations and was buried under the concrete flooring.

In December 2014, three months after the investigation commenced, a Planning Authority spokesperson told MaltaToday that it had received a laboratory report on the material collected from the site.

The major issue in the investigation was to determine whether the waste was deposited in 2012, when the area from where the samples were taken was cemented, or before Palumbo took over operations upon the privatisation of the dockyard.

But even if it transpired that the waste was deposited before Palumbo took over, it may still be held legally responsible for burying the waste under the concrete platform, legal sources had told MaltaToday.

The Planning Authority’s then-executive chairman Johann Buttigieg had confirmed that between 2012 and 2014, no permit was ever issued to superyacht yard operators Palumbo to export spent grit from sand blasting operations. “It transpired that Palumbo did not have a permit to export grit from the country. So what happened to the grit which was produced in those two years? Obviously, it was either laid under concrete or ended up in the sea,” Buttigieg had told the PA’s environmental and planning review tribunal.

Palumbo only applied for a permit to export grit after the PA clamped down on the company.