Ana Maria Luca: Trashed

Trashed
Ana Maria Luca/Now Lebanon/November 19/15

 The trash has been in Sed el Bouchrieh’s borderline with the Bourj Hammoud and Dekwaneh suburbs of Beirut for five years. It wasn’t very obvious that the municipality had a trash collection point there. The facility was fenced in and passersby and residents could not see what went on inside. The semi-industrial neighborhood hosts several small factories, workshops and car repair shops and is always crowded with customers in search of bargains among the chaotic traffic. It’s also expanding, with several construction sites in the immediate vicinity erecting tall office buildings. Very few people noticed the trash until it started to grow into a heap three to four months ago, when the government closed down the Naameh landfill that collected waste from Beirut and Mount Lebanon. The tip of the heap has reached well over the fences surrounding it — its peak now looks down on the building that shelters the personnel offices.

 “The mountain has been here for three, maybe four months,” says Elias, a man in his late 20s who runs a car part shop with his father across the street. It reeks, but Elias says he doesn’t even notice it anymore. Nobody wears a mask. “It’s been here for months, we got used to it. It’s the municipality that runs the place. You can go up to the factory — I think you can see the whole mountain from there. Imagine that this is like and iceberg: there is as much in the ground. It’s like a building with a deep foundation. But what can we do? It’s political,” he says bitterly.

The heart of the problem
The trash crisis in Lebanon is not getting any closer to a solution, with piles of uncollected waste just like the one in Sed el Bauchrieh growing around Beirut and its suburbs. Agriculture Minister Akram Shehayyeb revealed that negotiations with European companies to export Lebanon’s garbage are to kick of today and the government is negotiating with four companies for the lowest price possible. He also explained that it’s also a matter of what kind of waste would be sent abroad and in what quantities, and that it was a matter of political consensus. “My proposal was obstructed for political reasons as well as reasons linked to various areas in the country,” Shehayyeb said today.

“There are other causes that I will not divulge,” he added. A committee formed at the Health Ministry issued a series of scientific recommendations at the beginning of November pledging to monitor the repercussions of the crisis on public health. “What I can say is that the damage did happen and it’s not small, but until this moment it can’t be specified — meaning that we can’t say what its extent is, but we are trying to monitor its effects,” Health Minister Wael Abou Faour said.

The committee was formed right after heavy rain flooded the streets of the Lebanese capital, dragging piles of domestic waste accumulated over weeks and raising concerns of pollutantscontaminating household water supplies. It also came as media reports signaled a higher number of patients hospitalized with conditions that could be related to the trash crisis: diarrhea, nausea, allergies, vomiting and abdominal pain were just a few of large number of symptoms. But the effects of a prolonged trash crisis might be more serious in the long term than allergies or even cholera.

The land of poison
Italians living in the Campania region have been living for decades what the Lebanese have been going through in the past four months. According to areport by Legambiente, an Italian environmental organization, Campania has a poisoned environment with over 5,000 illegal waste sites. The waste crisis in Campania started in 1994, when the Italian Council of Ministers declared the landfills in the region saturated and incapable of accepting any more municipal solid waste. But the crisis had been there for many years already, according to Amalia de Simone, an investigative journalist at www.corirere.it, who has been covering the trash crisis in her native Naples and Campania region for over a decade.

“In fact, this is not just about waste,” she told NOW. “It began many years earlier when entrepreneurs Northern Italy agreed with the clans of the Camorra [an infamous crime syndicate in Campania] to spill industrial and toxic waste in Campania, in illegal dumps as well as in landfills, that were authorized to accept only municipal waste.”Business owners were saving money on waste treatment and the mafia families made money, with the tacit agreement of politicians, administrators, and consultants who turned a blind eye on the problem. “In some areas of Campania, textile waste, tannery, chemical and construction waste were and still are dumped and set on fire. The fires cause toxic clouds that poison the environment,” she said.

The waste problem has never been really solved: commissioners were appointed, corruption investigations started, candidates spoke about it in electoral campaigns, but dumps were opened and turned into heaps of waste that over the years have rotted and started to infiltrate leachate in the soil and water. Landfills remain saturated, agricultural lands are poisoned. “Naples is no longer invaded by trash because of recycling, the creation of ecological islands and the transfer of some waste outside the region,” de Simone said. But it’s just to hide the dust under the carpet. In short, the problem of municipal waste is not visible now, but the spill from toxic industrial waste is very serious.”

The trash-related health problems
In some areas of Campania, especially close to landfills, there was an increase in tumors, cancer and respiratory diseases. Children are the most vulnerable, reports say, as ministers have blamed the “wrong lifestyle of these people” rather than the toxic spills. “Unfortunately, there were already hundreds of deaths,” de Simone explained. “The problem is that it is difficult in both scientific and legal terms to establish proof of a relationship between the garbage problem and the diseases, also because the health authorities have never opened a cancer registry. Families living near landfills [authorized or unauthorized] could not get any compensation, even when the judge could identify those responsible for the toxic spills.” What is worse, she says, is that the waste problem hasn’t been contained; it is constantly spreading.

Since Campania is already ‘the land of poison,’ the enterprises reoriented towards other regions to dump the waste. “There are cities such as Brescia where a worrying level of radioactivity has been detected,” she said. “In short, the problem of waste and pollution is attributed mainly to Campania, but in fact is an issue that concerns many areas in Italy, even unexpected areas such as Tuscany and Umbria.”

Meanwhile, in Beirut
Nareg, a man in his late 40s who owns a shop across the street from the Sed el Bauchrieh trash heap, is not as resigned as some of his neighbors are. “We have fights with the people from the municipality and the guys who come with the trucks every single day. There is always a fight over there, at the gate. We’re going to get sick. All of us. They bring at least 10 trucks every day! Look at all these flies!” he says, his voice rising in ager as he speaks. Beyond the fence of the compound, a dozen workers wearing white medical masks and gloves stand on piles of waste and stuff it all in plastic white bags.

“We were told not to burn it. So we’re putting it in bags to prevent the smell from spreading,” says the manager, a short man wearing soiled jeans, with a shrug. In his office, he turns down the volume of the television and points at something outside, right under the window: “Look, we have a recycling machine. But it doesn’t work right now. It’s broken.”He says that at the municipality they are doing what they can in the situation: people from the surrounding neighborhoods prefer to bring the trash here than leaving it on the streets. Before the Naameh landfill closed, Sukleen trucks would pick it up every day. But now they have nowhere to take it. “What we can do is to pack it and not let the smell spread,” the manager says, adding that they have protection suits for the workers as well as masks and boots. But none of the workers wanted to wear them. “They prefer the usual medical masks,” he shrugs. “What can we do? We have to wait for the politicians to agree.”
https://now.mmedia.me/lb/en/reportsfeatures/566252-trashed