23 October 2007

BEIRUT: Environmental organizations ripped the Environment Ministry for waiting until this month to launch the second phase of the clean-up of the massive oil spill caused by Israel's bombing of the Jiyyeh power plant in July of 2006. The non-governmental organizations lambasted the ministry for wasting the favorable summer weather and beginning the next phase of the clean-up with harsh winter weather probably only weeks away, while the ministry's director general said his office had not had money to start the work earlier.

Earlier this month the Lebanese firm Promar commenced cleaning 23 sites on the coastline from Tabarja to Enfeh, after Promar had won a ministry tender with a bid of $683,000 to complete the work in six months.

"Promar should be finished by now," said Mohammad Sarji, a leading member of the environmental NGO Bahr Loubnan, which cleaned the coast from south of Jiyyeh to the Ramlet al-Baida beach south of Beirut. "They should have started six months ago. This should have been done. We should go into winter with the beaches cleaned. Unfortunately, the ministry doesn't think like environmentalists."

At the ministry, "their strategy isn't really to get Lebanon cleaned up as [much as] to get contracts," Sarji added. "That's all they do. That's all they're good at. They're not really doing what's supposed to be done."

A lack of money was the only reason the ministry did not run the bid process and get the 2007 phase of the clean-up under way earlier, said Berj Hatjian, director general of the Environment Ministry who has been running the institution since Environment Minister Yaaqoub Sarraf resigned last November.

"When there is no money available, you cannot do much," Hatjian told The Daily Star on Monday. "When the money was available, the money was expedited. When you work in the domain of environment, funds are not always readily available."

The foreign donors largely footing the bill for the clean-up needed a long time to get approval from the home countries, Hatjian added. For example, Japan is paying the $1 million cost of the second clean-up phase in Ras Beirut.

The ministry delayed the tender by a couple of weeks, Hatjian said, but he added that the postponement would not result in any further damage to the environment from the spill.

"These types of delays were pretty negligible," he said. "This particular delay is not something quantifiable scientifically. There is no need to panic."

NGO representatives, however, countered that the delay was only the latest symptom of the ministry's perpetual tardiness in addressing the catastrophe. No one can know the damage wrought by the delay because the ministry has not done any assessment of the spill's impact, said Ali Darwish, head of the NGO Green Line.

"All the timing is late, not because this operation started late, but the fact is this should have been an ongoing process since last year," Darwish said. "The whole response is late. Last year we said they should start as

soon as possible," adding that Promar should be able to work until late November.

"The weather is still appropriate, but what was hindering the clean-up in the summer?" he asked. "Why wouldn't you do clean-up daily? Whether this operation comes one month later or one month earlier makes no difference. The damage is there. It is increasing."

He could not say how much more damage the inactivity since late January had caused, but for he also blamed the ministry for the lack of clear information on the condition of the marine ecosystem 15 months after some 12,500-15,000 tons of intermediate fuel oil fouled more than 100 kilometers of Lebanese and Syrian coast.

"Who is monitoring the level of pollution in the fish?" he asked. "This is all a government responsibility. I would basically challenge whether any institution in this country knows to what extent the pollution has reached and how much clean-up needs to be done."

Hatjian countered that a major study was being taken by the National Council for Scientific Research, but he did not know when the council would finish the report because the group does not report to the ministry. The ministry also undertook two assessments this spring, one of the seabed and the other of the coastline. He labeled the underwater assessment "very detailed" and said the land survey had investigated 35 sites.

A World Bank study soon to be released put the environmental degradation caused by the oil spill at $205 million through the end of 2008, out of the $730 million overall environmental damage wreaked by Israel upon Lebanon, Hatjian added.

The ministry has yet to begin another phase of the clean-up - the removal of tons of oily sand collected in bags on the Ramlet al-Baida beach. Hatjian said the sacks would be taken from the beach soon, but one NGO said the waste was already seeping back onto the beach and the sea.

"We've taken pictures with oil leaking out of these bags back into the sand," said Wael Hmaydan, executive director of the NGO IndyAct. "We should not keep this waste one day on the beach. A huge amount of the collected oil is still there. I think we have an emergency still. This is something not acceptable for us.

"The ministry did not push forward enough on this. The NGOs who did the clean-up should have been pushed further. I cannot blame an NGO, because someone should be monitoring the situation."

Bahr Loubnan, which collected the waste now littering the Ramlet al-Baida beach, received an offer from cement maker Holcim to buy the detritus and burn it as fuel, Sarji said.

The ministry, however, asked Bahr Loubnan to purchase containers and polyethylene liners for the waste, and then store it at the Zahrani power plant in South Lebanon for six months before shipping it abroad for disposal, Sarji added.

"Why do we have to pay money and take it to a foreign country?" Sarji asked. "Shipping is not the answer. We don't want to be part of that. This is fuel. This is worth money."

Buying the containers and removing the oiled sand would cost Bahr Loubnan $100,000-$150,000, Sarji said.

Environmental experts advised Bahr Loubnan to sell the collected material to companies like Holcim, which had burned similar wastes after the 1999 oil spill in France from the TotalFinaElf tanker Erika, Sarji added.

"I consulted with them and, honest to God, they told me to give it to companies like Holcim," Sarji said. "It's the best solution we have here. Now that [the ministry] failed to do something, they put us against the wall and say, 'Buy containers.'"

Hatjian "told me point-blank: 'I don't care about anybody's opinion - we're going to ship them out,'" Sarji said.

Hatjian said Holcim was unable to handle the disposal of the waste and had not submitted an environmental impact assessment to the ministry proving it could burn the waste safely.

"Bahr Loubnan has done what is in its capacity," Hatjian said. "We take this opportunity to thank them for the effort. Holcim is not equipped, to our knowledge, at this moment to handle this type of waste."

"We do have a timeline" to remove the sacks, he added. "It's not very far from today."