Marsaskala: The Fight for the Bay

The ferry terminal and the EIA waiver

The Marsaskala fast-ferry terminal is part of a wider €18 million regeneration project that would link the town directly to Valletta. The works include a ramp, a waiting area, and dredging of the bay. Quay reconstruction began on 2 March 2026, with completion scheduled for 30 June.

On 2 April 2026, the Environment and Resources Authority issued a decision not to object to the ferry works and recommended that a full Environmental Impact Assessment was not required. The Marsaskala Residents' Network (MRN) and environmental groups warned that the dredging could damage the protected Posidonia oceanica seagrass meadows in the bay, as well as archaeological remains beneath it.

Residents also point to the project's own numbers. The ferry is expected to reduce road traffic by roughly 30 cars per day, while potentially delivering thousands of tourists into the town daily during peak season. MRN members told journalists that meetings with Infrastructure Minister Chris Bonett had been "informational rather than consultative."

"ERA is abdicating all responsibility to protect the bay from development that may be detrimental to this protected habitat."

- ADPD, The Green Party, April 2026

Momentum described the waiver as "environmentally dangerous" and warned against fast-tracking a project with known ecological and social risks. Minister Bonett has publicly insisted that Marsaskala's swimming zones will not be touched.

The promenade arches: works without permits

In October and November 2025, residents discovered demolition works under the promenade on Triq is-Salini. No planning permits had been issued for the works. The Marsaskala Residents' Network filed formal objections and organised protests demanding that the demolition of the promenade arches stop immediately.

Critics, including Momentum, called the approach "salami-slicing": splitting a single major project into several smaller applications so that each piece avoids the scrutiny that the whole would attract. The demolition on the promenade appeared to be linked, in practice, to the ferry works, even though the two were being presented to residents as separate projects.

The marina that was stopped, and the pattern

The ferry dispute is not the first time Marsaskala Bay has been the focus of a plan residents did not ask for. A proposal for a water-polo pitch with commercial facilities, followed by a yacht marina, was met with strong public opposition and ultimately halted through sustained community mobilisation.

The Planning Authority has also rejected a permit for a shopping mall and hotel on an ODZ (Outside Development Zone) plot in Marsaskala, with objections focused on the traffic increase the project would bring. Residents had campaigned for years over the delay in revising the town's local plan - the framework that is meant to protect land use and coastline in the first place.

The through-line that residents describe is not one project. It is a pattern. A proposal appears. Consultation, when it happens at all, is framed as informational. Environmental thresholds are set just low enough for a waiver. By the time the objections are heard, the machines are already on site.

How this connects to the housing picture

The direct housing story in Marsaskala is different from Valletta or Sliema. It is less about tourist lets displacing residents street by street, and more about coastline and public space being converted into commercial infrastructure without the consent of the people who live there. But the logic is the same one documented elsewhere on this site: public assets are treated as inputs for private revenue, planning is reactive rather than preventive, and the cost falls on the community.

When a bay is dredged, a promenade demolished, or a quay rebuilt for fast-ferry traffic, the quality of life of the people who live one street back is what changes. Noise, traffic, summer-long crowding, and pressure on the same few roads and shops follow. Those pressures show up, eventually, in rents, in who can afford to stay, and in who decides to leave.

What residents are asking for

• A full Environmental Impact Assessment for the ferry works, covering the bay as a single project rather than a series of smaller applications.
• Enforcement on the unpermitted demolition of the promenade arches, and restoration where possible.
• A revised local plan for Marsaskala, overdue for more than a decade, with coastline and ODZ land protected.
• Meetings with the Transport and Environment ministries that are consultative in substance, not only in name.