LEBANON: One year on, war pollution still stains Lebanon's shores

Over a year after the devastating war between Hezbollah and Israel came to an end, stretches of Lebanon's coastline remain polluted by thick black oil from a power plant bombed by Israel during the war. Near the historic coastal city of Byblos, 40 kilometres north of Beirut, black oil from the resulting slick still clings to the shore and to the rocks at the bottom of the seabed. The slick was caused by Israel's bombardment of the Jiyeh power plant in southern Lebanon during its 34-day offensive against Hezbollah. The heavy fuel oil settled along a 140-km (87-mile) stretch of coast. The spilled oil was estimated at up to 15,000 tonnes. Local and international civic and environmental groups who have been waging a long battle against the black sludge that seeped into the sea accuse the Lebanese government of not working hard enough to clean up Lebanon's shores. "Regarding this catastrophe which Israel caused intentionally, the (Lebanese) government hasn't taken any measures which are commensurate with the scale of the crime committed, be it on the level of charging Israel with the crime or raising the necessary funds to clean the area and, of course, conduct follow-up studies on the issue of pollution and its effect on the health of humans as well as that of marine life. This suggests procrastination, if not negligence, on the part of government institutions, and we here refer to the highest levels of the executive authority," said Ali Darwish, head of the Green Line Association. Lebanon's Environment Ministry says 60 to 70 percent of the oil spread out over 150 kilometres of coastline has been cleaned up, and 26 rocky sites have not yet been touched. "Cleaning it up is harder than just collecting it in the sand. That is to say, it needs to be blasted with steam and with substances which will break it up, which will break up the oil slick. The particles will then mix with the water and booms will need to be used to collect the oil spill. This all needs equipment, of course," explained Fadwa Kallab, the head of the environmental group Byblos Ecologia. "We should have cleaned this up before now. I mean, they stopped at the end of March, then we had April, May, June, July, August -- these are the best times to clean because the sea is calm. But it wasn't cleaned. It will take time to ask again that it be cleaned, or to get the necessary funds -- we've been hearing all along: 'We got aid, we got enough aid from several sources to clean all the Lebanese shores.' Unfortunately, we hear this a lot -- we become happy when we hear this then sad when we see what there is in reality," Kallab added. The Swiss-based World Conservation Union (IUCN) said in a statement last year the spill had left cancer-causing toxins on the shorelines which could cause the sudden collapse of fish populations years later. Reporting on a week-long trip to the Mediterranean in August 2006, IUCN found the oil had killed algae and other organisms that fish and turtles feed on, threatening marine life and migrant birds.

ITN Source | September 11, 2007

Tags:. .statement. .regarding. .measures. .wasnt. .sad