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25 July 2007
Environmental group presses ministry to clear coastline of polluted sand
By John Ehab
BEIRUT: The non-governmental
organization Bahr Loubnan urged the Environment Ministry on Tuesday to
remove polluted sand accumulated along Lebanon's shores during efforts
to clean up an oil spill cause by an Israeli attack in 2006. An
Israeli air strike on the Jiyyeh power plant during last summer's war
spilled over 15,000 tons of crude oil into the Mediterranean,
polluting much of Lebanon's coast.
"Sadly, crude oil still ... remains along the shore," said president
of the Lebanese Union of Professional Divers Mohammad Sarji on behalf
of Bahr Loubnan. "The ministry is refusing any local solution and
insists on transferring the [accumulated] remains out of Lebanon at a
high cost."
However, Ali Darwish, the president of the environmental NGO Green
Line, says the Environment Ministry is not solely responsible for the
removal of the polluted sand.
"The Public Works Ministry is also responsible for the Lebanese
shores," he added. "But they haven't" approached the problem since it
began.
The Directorate General of Maritime and Land Transport, a department
under the Public Works Ministry, has shown no signs of trying to solve
the problem, Darwish said, adding that the group has never been
involved in addressing envi-ronmental crises along Lebanon's shores.
"Even the Lebanese government has never mentioned the oil spill or any
of the environmental disasters," he said.
Also attending Tuesday's meeting was American ecology professor Rick
Steiner, who is visiting Lebanon to assess the Lebanese beaches one
year after the crisis began. Steiner aided in the environmental
assessment of 1989's Exxon-Valdez oil spill in Alaska.
The UN General Assembly called on Israel in February to compensate the
Lebanese government for the costs of environmental damage. The cost of
treating the oil spill was estimated by the Environment Ministry at
approximately $200 million.