Will the subsea tunnel feed land reclamation

Abstract

The current hype revolving around the development of a permanent Malta-Gozo link has touched briefly upon environmental concerns as well, with the tunnel option being touted by many as having a significantly lower environmental impact than the bridge since the former option does not impinge directly on the seabed. Whilst this conclusion is, to a large extent, factual, other environmental considerations must be made when assessing the environmental footprint of the same link options. For instance, excavation of the tunnel will necessarily generate profuse volumes of C&D (Construction and Demolition) Waste, probably to the tune of volumes exceeding half a million cubic metres, if one assumes an 11-km-long tunnel, with a width of 10m and a height of 5m. In order to contextualise such a volume, one must crunch some numbers……according to the national waste management plan for 2014-2020, in 2011, which strangely represents the most recent year for which such statistics are available, slightly over 700,000 tons of such inert waste were generated, of which 61% was backfilled into quarries, 21% was disposed off at sea at the only operational marine spoil ground located off the Grand Harbour, whilst only 18% was recycled or recovered. Such figures jar with the target Malta set upon itself of recovering 70% of its C&D waste by 2020, and reveal the real magnitude of the inert waste volumes which will be generated through the tunnel excavation.