Quarry lifespan depends on method used, recycling efficiency and amount of material generated
There is no clear timeframe for when ten quarries which have been granted permission for the dumping of construction waste will be filled up, but the government is working on a long-term strategy which would also include other quarries, according to the environment ministry.
The move to issue permits to ten quarries to receive construction waste comes after warnings that the construction industry was finding nowhere to dispose of its waste since all quarries had reached their infilling capacity.
Last week the environment ministry announced that an abandoned quarry in the limits of Siggiewi would start receiving C&D waste. The site will be managed and operated by Wasteserv.
A few days later the ERA announced that it had granted ten environmental permits which will allow ten quarries in the limits of Mqabba, Siggiewi and Iklin to be authorised to accept inert, construction and demolition waste for disposal purposes. The quarries are privately owned. An environment ministry spokesperson said: “The Environment and Resources Authority environmental permits are issued to operators of waste management processes and not to owners of the site. This is because such management processes are of environmental significance and need to be covered by ERA permits to ensure that such activities are carried out in accordance to the best environmental practices to achieve the required level of environment protection for the surroundings.”
Asked if Wasteserv would be paying the quarry owners, the ministry said, “in these particular cases the permits have been issued on the quarry operators and the specific sites. The Wasteserv may enter into separate arrangements with operators as the Operator of the last resort.”
The spokesperson said the ERA permitting and notification systems covers the movement, transfer and acceptance of the clean, inert C&D waste to the site, but does not relate to any payment that is requested by the operators when such material is deposited at the site.
“However, it is usual practice that such payments are determined by market forces calculated on the volume of C&D waste that is deposited at the site.”
Quarry operators are also being offered a tax rebate of 25% if they do not charge more than €5.50 for every tone of material infilled.
Asked if there was an indication of when these ten quarries would reach capacity, the ministry said: “The lifetime of the quarry life is dependable on the method of infilling, the efficiency of recycling of good material and the volume of material that is generated. The Authority has recently embarked on an exercise to extrapolate the void space available in the medium to long term.”
Asked what happens when full capacity is reached, and whether there would be efforts to rehabilitate the area, the spokesperson said: “A long-term strategy is being drafted to address the disposal of construction waste in conjunction with further disused quarries that have viable void to be infilled.”