Saving our valleys
Partit Demokratiku this week said 70 valleys should be listed as public domain areas, meaning they would be afforded special protection status. This is a very sensible and necessary thing to do. Many people do not know much about the Public Domain Act, and few would have realised that, unlike our foreshore, which was automatically declared as Public Domain when the law came into force, valleys were not given the same status.
This would be a very important step given the sorry state of many of our valleys.
The PD held its press conference at Wied Qirda in Żebbuġ. The once-beautiful valley runs from Żebbuġ to Ħandaq and Ħal Farruġ. It has many interesting features, including the curious ‘Tomb of the English Lady’ (il-qabar tal-Ingliża), which was hewn out of rock.
Occasionally, one can spot a rabbit hopping behind the bushes, or a black snake slithering on the ground, but Wied Qirda, true to its name, is today not much more than an illegal dumping ground.
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Animal carcasses, old mattresses, and bags of waste are regularly discarded among the vegetation.
In winter, the little water that runs through the clogged up canals turns dirt black.
A few weeks back someone left a trail of oil over 300 metres long. Car tyres, fridges and other unwanted home appliances are also a common sight.
Someone even had the audacity to drive down to an old farm building to discard bags full of unwanted children’s toys and board games (pictured below). The same building has also been set on fire numerous times.
The crazy thing is that in order to reach this particular building, one would have to drive some two kilometres down bumpy roads, presumably after dark. It would definitely be much easier to drive to the nearest skip or civic amenity site and dispose of the waste in a proper manner.
Why people would go through the trouble of loading up an old fridge onto a pick-up truck and driving all the way down the valley to discard it when local councils will get it off your back for free is also mind boggling.
This situation is obviously not limited to Wied Qirda or Żebbuġ, but happens all over the island. It most certainly has something to do with a lack of education and awareness about all the ways in which we can dispose of our waste. We definitely need a much bigger effort to educate people not only on the different options that exist, but also on the damage, sometimes irreparable, that dumping in valleys leads to.
But our valleys also need better legal and actual protection. People do not dump waste at Buskett because Buskett is widely recognized as being an official green area that is there to be enjoyed by families. The same has to apply to valleys. They have to be given special protection, there have to be regular clean-ups and there has to be serious enforcement. Anyone caught dumping illegally should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. But no illegal dumpers will be caught unless someone is tasked with watching over these areas.