Six months after thousands of tonnes of fuel oil spilled into the Mediterranean when Israel bombed a Lebanese power plant, the waters are still spitting out black poison despite efforts to clean up the mess.
“The rain and the low tide have created new pollution zones,” Ahmed Kojok of the Sea of Lebanon association told the media.
On Beirut’s sun-splashed Ramlet al-Bayda beach, a human chain passed buckets filled with large black chunks — mixtures of fuel oil, sand and debris — which were emptied by a volunteer into large white watertight bags.
“It’s sad,” muttered a fisherman who works for the association, running his fingers over dozens of seashells mucked together in a sticky glob.
The coast was polluted by about 15 000 tonnes of fuel oil after the Israeli military bombed Lebanon’s southern Jiyeh power plant in mid-July during its 34-day offensive against the Shi’ite militia Hezbollah.
Since then, local and international civic groups and the Lebanese Environment Ministry have been waging a long battle against the black sludge that seeped into the sea.
A recent report by the European Commission’s Monitoring and Information Centre said “virtually all free oil at sea or in the harbours and marinas had been recovered by the end of September [2006]”. And the historic port of Byblos north of the capital has filled anew with fishermen.
But many beaches, like Jiyeh and Ramlet al-Bayda, continue to fight the pollution.
Greenpeace has described the spill, which polluted about 150km of the Lebanese coast, as an “underwater nightmare” and a “time bomb” because oil has sunk to the seabed. The environmental group has estimated it will take at least a year to clean.
Over the course of six days, the Sea of Lebanon association filled 18 bags with two tonnes of pestilent sludge.
“And we still have another week of work here,” association member Mohammed al-Sarji said.
The team recently spent three weeks in Jiyeh, where it gathered 122 bags of oil waste.
“In some places the dried fuel sludge was 40cm to 60cm thick. We were slicing it like cheese,” said Kojok.
Ghada Mitri, spokesperson for the Environment Ministry, said that so far 1 100 cubic metres of liquid fuel and 5 440 cubic metres of debris, sand and muck had been extracted.
She said she hoped the clean-up will be finished “before summer” but declined to commit to a more precise timeframe.
Several obstacles could hamper the cleaning progress. Among them is the resignation of Environment Minister Yaacub Sarraf, who left the Western-backed Cabinet in November 2006 along with five pro-Syrian allies.
In addition to struggling through the political crisis paralysing the country, Lebanon is still having to tackle the environmental disaster and has launched an appeal for international aid to help cover the cost.
Although $150-million has been pledged, only about half of these funds have been made available, Mitri said.
There is also the nagging question of what to do with the dozens of sludge-filled sacks that are lined up along the beaches.
“We put them as far away from the water as we can to avoid any leaking,” Sarji said.
Lebanon has neither the technology nor the means to treat or recycle the material although the Environment Ministry has vowed to move the bags from the shoreline “as soon as possible” and store them in special depots, Mitri said.
“Then we will try to figure out which ones can be treated in Lebanon and which will have to be sent abroad,” she added. — AFP