Joseph Muscat slips on emission rules

Joseph Muscat's claim that emissions from the Delimara BWSC plant are within limits simply because emissions' thresholds were raised by the previous government, has been debunked by technical experts consulted by this newspaper.

On Wednesday, Muscat was asked whether he was prepared to retract his 'cancer factory' remark on the Delimara power station extension, after the Malta Environment and Planning Authority issued a report conducted by the University of West England which found no deterioration of air quality following the operation of the Delimara BWSC plant using heavy fuel oil (HFO).

Muscat refused to retract the cancer factory claim, insisting that it was the Nationalist government that had raised the emission thresholds to accommodate BWSC. "That was why the emissions were within the law."

The previous government had increased the allowable emission limits for Delimara, by means of a legal notice in January 2008 - right in the middle of the tender process - that enabled BWSC's diesel engine to comply with environmental requirements, in contrast to the original levels on the proper tender document.

Muscat now claims that the University of Western England (UWE) results on air quality showed no evidence of extra pollution from the BWSC plant simply because the PN government had raised the acceptable limits before issuing the necessary permits for the plant.

But according to energy expert Edward Mallia, the Prime Minister has no idea what task the British University had been set.

"This [task] was to examine whether the coming on stream of Heavy Fuel Oil from BWSC, with its pollution abatement equipment fully functioning, produced any fine particulate emissions in excess of that produced by old Delimara power station. Therefore the result that no extra pollution was detected had nothing to do with changing of limits."

Muscat gets directive wrong

A technical expert who preferred not to be named pointed out that the MEPA study refers to air quality standards, which apply to the whole of the European Union, and therefore are unrelated to any change in legislation in Malta.

According to the expert, the report does not deal with emissions from the plant itself as suggested by Muscat, but deals with compliance with the ambient air quality standards, which are universally applicable throughout the EU. In fact while ambient air quality standards are regulated by the Ambient Air Quality Directive (2008/50/EC), emissions from the plant itself regulated by the Large Combustion Plants Directive (2001/80/EC). 

"These are two separate laws which do not regulate the same issues," the expert pointed out. 

"When the government changed the legal notice to accommodate the BWSC plant it did not change the EU's parameters on air quality standards."

In fact the ambient air quality directive deals with the air that we breathe while the large combustion plants directive deals with the concentration of pollutants in the waste gases from power and similar plants.

"So basically while not delving into the issue of the large combustion plants directive, the report deals with the air the residents in the Marsaxlokk and Birzebbugia area are breathing and concludes that it is unlikely that exceedances of the air quality standards in the area are due to the activity of the power plants and it is more likely that other sources are the major drivers behind these exceedances."

Is BWSC plant a cancer factory?

According to Mallia, the original "cancer factory" remark made before the election and repeated this week in another form by Muscat simply does not make any sense as far as old Delimara Power Station - and to an even lesser degree, the BWSC power station - are concerned. 

"Cancers take a long time - over 10 years - to develop, except in cases of extreme levels of pollution," Mallia said.

According to Mallia, the old power station, with its very tall chimney, has not been around long enough. He added that this was pointed out to Joseph Muscat by medical expert Victor Calvagna, who had worked on the very different case of Marsa Power station.

It is also difficult to trace particular cases of cancer to specific sources - again, except in really extreme cases like the Porto Marghera PVC plant, or the Acerra (Naples) incinerator or the ILVA (Taranto) steel works. "The cigarette smoke-lung cancer connection took eight years of unremitting work before is was accepted by the medics."

Moreover, according to Mallia, if Muscat is correct in his attribution that the power station is still a cancer factory, "How come he has allowed Konrad Mizzi to ask for continued use of HFO in BWSC?"

Back in 2012, the Labour Party had committed itself to switch BWSC to diesel as soon as he was elected, before the power station is converted to gas.

Mallia believes that there is a solid technical reason why Labour cannot honour this promise. "That was another foolish proposal, as Konrad Mizzi has had occasion to find out."

The reason why the conversion is not possible is that Malta lacks enough diesel storage to safely cover full running of BWSC on diesel. "Changing over HFO tanks to diesel takes time. Before the Sicily cable arrives, we would be running a risk of interruption of supply if we attempted the fuel change."

The MEPA study

A study by air quality experts from the University of the West of England, has confirmed that heavy fuel oil, the residue from crude oil refining that fires the diesel engines provided by BWSC, did not lead to an increase in particular matter from the new Delimara power station turbines.

A study on atmospheric particular matter (PM) 2.5 and 10 - the tiny pieces of solid or liquid matter that are smaller than 2.5 micrometers, such as soot particles, or less than 10 micrometers - found no particular increase in emissions in a pre-2013 and post-2013 study on air quality in the most affected towns of Marsaxlokk and Birzebbugia, which live under the shadow of Delimara power station.

Former finance minister Tonio Fenech now claims that Labour's pre-election claim that Delimara was "a cancer factory" was a false accusation that vindicated the former administration's decision to run the new diesel turbines on HFO.

Labour famously dubbed Delimara's new turbines a 'factory of cancer'.

Speaking during a special edition of programme Affari Taghna during the electoral campaign, Muscat said that removing polluting power stations to safeguard the people's health was reason enough to go ahead with his party's plan.

He added that he would also invite a child from Marsaxlokk to inaugurate the removal of the Delimara power station's chimney.

Muscat heard a grandmother of nine talk about relatives who died of cancer and a three-year-old grandchild who is sick with cancer.

"My father died of cancer and eight of my nine grandchildren suffer from asthma. Each day is spent at health centres. And now, our three-year-old grandchild has been diagnosed with cancer," the woman from Marsaxlokk said.