Fighting leaves Lebanon with enviro crisis

Endangered turtles die shortly after hatching from their eggs.

Fish float dead off the coast. Flaming oil sends waves of black smoke toward the city.In this country of Mediterranean beaches and snowcapped mountains, Israeli bombing that caused an oil spill has created an environmental disaster.And cleanup can’t start until the fighting stops, the UN says.World attention has focused on the hundreds of people who have died in the three-week-old conflict between Israel and Hezbollah.The environmental damage has attracted little attention but experts warn the long-term effects could be devastating.Some 110 000 barrels of oil poured into the Mediterranean two weeks ago after Israeli warplanes hit a coastal power plant.One tank is still burning, sending clouds of thick black smoke across the country.Compounding the problem is an Israeli naval blockade and continuing military operations that have made any cleanup impossible.And environmental officials say the longer the problem is allowed to go unchecked, the greater the lasting damage.”The immediate impact can be severe but we have not been able to do an immediate assessment,” said United Nations Environment Programme executive director Achim Steiner in Geneva.”But the longer the spill is left untreated, the harder it will be to clean up.”The oil so far has slicked about one third of Lebanon’s coast, an 80 kilometre stretch centred on the Jiyeh plant, about 20 km south of Beirut, Environment Minister Yaacoub Sarraf said.It has also drifted out into the Mediterranean, already hitting neighbouring Syria.Experts warn Cyprus, Turkey and even Greece could be affected.Sarraf claimed that Israeli planes “purposely hit the tanks which are the closest to the sea”, and knocked out the berms designed to prevent any ruptured tanks from flowing into the waters.”As long as there is no cease-fire and as long as we don’t have access to the sea, not only can we not start the treatment but we cannot even access or get the data which is essential,” Sarraf said in English.”Chances are, our whole marine ecosystem facing the Lebanese shoreline is already dead.What is at stake today is all marine life in the eastern Mediterranean.”Israel’s Environmental Affairs ministry declined comment to The Associated Press in Jerusalem, referring questions to the Foreign Ministry, which did not immediately return phone calls.Lebanon, whose flag features a cedar tree and which is known by many as Green Lebanon for its forested mountains, is one of the few countries in the Arab world that pays attention to pollution.Mini buses that run on diesel have been banned, while factories are forced to abide by strict rules.Now, large parts of the country’s sandy and rocky beaches, visited in the past by hundreds of thousands of tourists each year, are covered with thick black layers of oil.Many fishermen have been forced out of business, and people are scared to eat fish.Baby turtles, usually born in late summer, die after they swim into the water shortly after hatching from eggs.Syria was already experiencing similar problems, said Hassan Murjan, who heads the environment department in the Syrian city of Tartous.”The oil pollution has caused serious environmental damage because our coast is rocky and this is very dangerous for marine life,” Murjan told the official news agency Sana.The first country to rush and help Lebanon was Kuwait, which suffered a similar disaster during the 1991 Gulf War.But three truckloads of cleanup supplies the country sent in are stuck in Beirut, with crews waiting for the fighting to wane before beginning their work, said the capital’s mayor, Abdel Monem Ariss.”We have no access to Lebanon territorial waters,” Sarraf said.”This means that we are already 10 days delayed and in terms of oil pollution, 10 days is a century.”Three local environmental organisations demanded a ceasefire to no avail.”Cleanup operations should start as soon as possible otherwise most of the damage will be irreversible,” warned Wael Hmaidan, head of the assessment group on the ground.”The more time we allow the oil to settle into the sand, rocks and seabed, the harder it will be to clean it up.”Sarraf estimated it will cost between US$30 million (about N$216 million) to US$50 million (about N$360 million) to clean up the shorelines, and possibly ten times that much the entire effort.Optimistic assessments suggest it will take at least six months for the shore cleanup and up to 10 years for “the re-establishment of the ecosystem of the eastern Mediterranean as it was two weeks ago,” he said.In Geneva, the UNEP’s Steiner said the agency has teams on standby to move to Lebanon as soon as the conditions permit.”Oil and marine diversity do not mix well,” Steiner said.”We are immediately concerned for marine life in the area.”Sarraf likened the disaster to the Erika spill off of France in 1999, when the oil tanker split in two and dumped 70 000 barrels of oil into the Atlantic that washed up along 400 km of French shoreline.But this case carries the added problem of the burning tank, smoke from which has reached Beirut, and that cleanup crews cannot start work, he said.”We are facing a much more critical problem, he said.”I say imagine you having your kid sick, knowing that he is sick, and not being able to bring a physician to examine him and to know what is the disease before you start treating him.This is what we are facing.”Nampa-APFlaming oil sends waves of black smoke toward the city.In this country of Mediterranean beaches and snowcapped mountains, Israeli bombing that caused an oil spill has created an environmental disaster.And cleanup can’t start until the fighting stops, the UN says.World attention has focused on the hundreds of people who have died in the three-week-old conflict between Israel and Hezbollah.The environmental damage has attracted little attention but experts warn the long-term effects could be devastating.Some 110 000 barrels of oil poured into the Mediterranean two weeks ago after Israeli warplanes hit a coastal power plant.One tank is still burning, sending clouds of thick black smoke across the country.Compounding the problem is an Israeli naval blockade and continuing military operations that have made any cleanup impossible.And environmental officials say the longer the problem is allowed to go unchecked, the greater the lasting damage.”The immediate impact can be severe but we have not been able to do an immediate assessment,” said United Nations Environment Programme executive director Achim Steiner in Geneva.”But the longer the spill is left untreated, the harder it will be to clean up.”The oil so far has slicked about one third of Lebanon’s coast, an 80 kilometre stretch centred on the Jiyeh plant, about 20 km south of Beirut, Environment Minister Yaacoub Sarraf said.It has also drifted out into the Mediterranean, already hitting neighbouring Syria.Experts warn Cyprus, Turkey and even Greece could be affected.Sarraf claimed that Israeli planes “purposely hit the tanks which are the closest to the sea”, and knocked out the berms designed to prevent any ruptured tanks from flowing into the waters.”As long as there is no cease-fire and as long as we don’t have access to the sea, not only can we not start the treatment but we cannot even access or get the data which is essential,” Sarraf said in English.”Chances are, our whole marine ecosystem facing the Lebanese shoreline is already dead.What is at stake today is all marine life in the eastern Mediterranean.”Israel’s Environmental Affairs ministry declined comment to The Associated Press in Jerusalem, referring questions to the Foreign Ministry, which did not immediately return phone calls.Lebanon, whose flag features a cedar tree and which is known by many as Green Lebanon for its forested mountains, is one of the few countries in the Arab world that pays attention to pollution.Mini buses that run on diesel have been banned, while factories are forced to abide by strict rules.Now, large parts of the country’s sandy and rocky beaches, visited in the past by hundreds of thousands of tourists each year, are covered with thick black layers of oil.Many fishermen have been forced out of business, and people are scared to eat fish.Baby turtles, usually born in late summer, die after they swim into the water shortly after hatching from eggs.Syria was already experiencing similar problems, said Hassan Murjan, who heads the environment department in the Syrian city of Tartous.”The oil pollution has caused serious environmental damage because our coast is rocky and this is very dangerous for marine life,” Murjan told the official news agency Sana.The first country to rush and help Lebanon was Kuwait, which suffered a similar disaster during the 1991 Gulf War.But three truckloads of cleanup supplies the country sent in are stuck in Beirut, with crews waiting for the fighting to wane before beginning their work, said the capital’s mayor, Abdel Monem Ariss.”We have no access to Lebanon territorial waters,” Sarraf said.”This means that we are already 10 days delayed and in terms of oil pollution, 10 days is a century.”Three local environmental organisations demanded a ceasefire to no avail.”Cleanup operations should start as soon as possible otherwise most of the damage will be irreversible,” warned Wael Hmaidan, head of the assessment group on the ground.”The more time we allow the oil to settle into the sand, rocks and seabed, the harder it will be to clean it up.”Sarraf estimated it will cost between US$30 million (about N$216 million) to US$50 million (about N$360 million) to clean up the shorelines, and possibly ten times that much the entire effort.Optimistic assessments suggest it will take at least six months for the shore cleanup and up to 10 years for “the re-establishment of the ecosystem of the eastern Mediterranean as it was two weeks ago,” he said.In Geneva, the UNEP’s Steiner said the agency has teams on standby to move to Lebanon as soon as the conditions permit.”Oil and marine diversity do not mix well,” Steiner said.”We are immediately concerned for marine life in the area.”Sarraf likened the disaster to the Erika spill off of France in 1999, when the oil tanker split in two and dumped 70 000 barrels of oil into the Atlantic that washed up along 400 km of French shoreline.But this case carries the added problem of the burning tank, smoke from which has reached Beirut, and that cleanup crews cannot start work, he said.”We are facing a much more critical problem, he said.”I say imagine you having your kid sick, knowing that he is sick, and not being able to bring a physician to examine him and to know what is the disease before you start treating him.This is what we are facing.”Nampa-AP