Debris of war compounds ecological nightmare in Lebanon

UZAI, Lebanon (AFP) - One month of Israeli bombardment during the July-August war created millions of tonnes of rubble in Lebanon, adding to the ecological nightmare of a country that has suffered a succession of conflicts.

Even in normal times the main north-south coastal road was a handy dumping ground for rubbish, but now a dump of spectacular proportions is rising at Uzai on the southern exit from Beirut.

Between the highway and the shoreline an ever-growing mountain of acrid-smelling debris is piling steadily higher -- and also marching inexorably towards the breaking waves.

These are the ruins of the capital's southern suburbs, a Hezbollah bastion that was repeatedly pounded by Israel in July and August.

From this one area alone, in which 400 buildings were pulverized, engineers estimate the volume of debris at 1.2 million cubic metres (42 million cubic feet). Every day some 400 trucks laden with rubble make the trip between the suburbs and the rubbish tip.

"For two days at the end of August everything was tipped directly into the sea," says Omar al-Naeem of Greenpeace Lebanon. "But organisations protested, and now it is all collected and deposited along the shore."

Clearing the suburb is expected to take at least until the end of the year.

At least this rubble mountain can be seen, and the authorities know where it is.

In the south of the country, where the fighting was fierce and the authorities say 10,649 homes were completely destroyed, you have to search for much of the debris which has often been dumped in the folds between hills.

Only by following garbage trucks does one come across these "secret" dumps -- along secondary roads, well-hidden at the bottom of valleys and along water courses, or down banks by the roadside.

Ten or 11 trucks hauling 13 tonnes each day are continuing to clear the village of Ganduriyeh, which was home to 6,000 people, according to the driver of one truck found emptying debris.

"The rubble of destroyed houses isn't just cement," says Ricardo Khoury, whose Elard environmental consulting agency is contributing to a United Nations Environment Programme assessment of the ecological damage caused by the war.

"You also find everything that makes a home, things like batteries, storage heaters, fridges, electronic equipment... millions and millions of dollars are needed to dispose of all this properly."

"It's not easy," he adds. "Neither is it a priority."

Elard has pinpointed 16 sites that Khoury says are high priority and need to be cleaned up quickly.

These include the generating station at Jiyeh south of Beirut, where aerial bombardment created a massive oil slick that coated the Lebanese shoreline with sludge; fuel-storage tanks at Beirut Airport; warehouses that storied food, detergents and chemical products at Shuweifat, also south of the capital; plastics factories in Tyre; and a glass-producing plant in the Bekaa Valley.

All were hit by Israeli bombs or missiles and all burned for days.

But the treatment of refuse -- wastewater included -- is practically unheard of in Lebanon.

Apart from Beirut and Zahle in the east of the country, the main coastal towns -- Tyre and Sidon in the south and Tripoli in the north -- discharge their waste directly into the sea, says Karim Jisr, environmental consultant to the World Bank and United Nations Development Programme.

"Neither the government nor local authorities can be expected to provide a long-term solution. They come under a lot of social pressure, hence these improvised dumping sites," Jisr says.

"The idea would be to find a secure location (for the debris), and then there would be enough time to sort the problem out."

He says the government's development and reconstruction council is looking into the possibility of using some the country's quarries, most of which are no longer in use.

"They could be filled in and then covered with inert material," Jisr says.

"However the real problem is the coastline which is mostly not government land, but is owned by churches or private individuals. It will become no longer possible to cover kilometres of coast with debris" from the war.

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