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Sidon's garbage dump...Would the municipality's plan end 40 years of tribulations?

Written by Imane Salameh

Translated and edited by Rabab Housseiny


NNA - For 40 years, the locals of Sidon, South Lebanon's capital, have been swallowing the bitter pill yet hoping to eventually sigh in relief and wake up from an appalling nightmare that has laded their everyday life with the queasiest, most contaminated odors. The "mountain" is just piling higher, day by day, and has unapologetically become a giant hill. Much feared by it, the people of Sidon keep sounding the alarm on the likely contamination of this beautiful coastline city.

With time, the crisis grew bigger; and every effort to solve this plight was just doomed to failure.


The beginning of the problem

Conventionally, Sidon has had its own waste dump. Nonetheless, Lebanon's situation at the time and the much ailing environmental services rendered the city a garbage landfill for neighboring regions and towns, recounting 16 municipalities. Of course, devoting a special place for these municipalities' waste could not be envisaged, nay allowed.

As Dr. Abdul Rahman Bizri assumed Sidon's municipality chairmanship, there was a dire, stringent need to solve the crisis. Sadly enough, an alternative landfill in one of the towns benefitting from the dump was hard to find. The problem got more complicated, thus more obfuscating.


But hope came more into sight after the election of Mohammad Saudi as Head of the Sidon's municipality, whom we were keen to speak to in order to shine light on the predicament and skim through the proposed solutions to end the tribulations of Sidon's tenants.


The beginning of the solution

40 years were enough to turn Sidon's new municipality head into soldier number one whose target is to stamp out the trash mountain.


"Better late than never," Saudi replied to a question on the delay to reach a solution and bring the much-sought project into effect.


"This is a political question," he reckoned, as he made it clear he did not wish to dwell on politics.

"Circumstances back then were the key hindrance. Long time ago, the problem worsened as no agreement on an alternative landfill in next door Zaghedraya region could be reached. This drove us to opt for the sea as a loophole. We have devised a comprehensive project that would brush this nightmare away and rather turn it into a dream of a poison-free green environment," he told us.


The project's birth and execution

"The structural study kicked off building on the mountain's location on the southwestern side of Sidon's coastal highway along some 550 thousand square-meters," Saudi explained.

He added, "We adopted three complementary angles: a waste management plant to stop the random garbage disposal, the construction of a maritime barrier throughout 2200 meters--separating the sea from the surface--to dump most of the garbage inside the mountain until they decompose harmlessly, and the management of the rest of the waste."


He went on to say that 60 thousand meters would be deducted to build instead a station where solid material would be separated from liquids in a way that would allow sewage water purification for irrigation purposes.


Funding sources

The Lebanese state, represented by the Ministry of Environment, has contributed to executing the project through a contract with both Suez Company of France and "Jihad al-Arab" to remove the mountain.


Besides, KSA has offered a 20-million-dollar donation to build the maritime barrier.


Saudi estimated that by 2015, Sidon's locals might witness the completion of the long-awaited achievement, noting that the deadline of the project expires in 30 months

تابعوا أخبار الوكالة الوطنية للاعلام عبر أثير إذاعة لبنان على الموجات 98.5 و98.1 و96.2 FM

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