Shehayyeb and Safa Discuss 'Safe' Landfill Location in Bekaa
A meeting was reportedly held on Tuesday between Agriculture Minister Akram Shehayyeb and Hizbullah's top security official Wafiq Safa to collaborate on finding a landfill location in Bekaa in light of the aggravating trash management crisis.
The meeting between the two men was meant to find a “security and environmentally safe” location for a sanitary landfill in Bekaa, reports said.
Shehayyeb's waste crisis plan has received momentum from the interlocutors at the national dialogue meeting a day earlier, where all parties have unanimously agreed to provide support which prompted PM Tammam Salam to wonder about the identity and the forces driving some parties to reject the plan, the reports added.
Efforts to complete Akkar's Srar landfill are ongoing as part of Shehayyeb's plan, and Interior Minister Nouhad al-Mashnouq has received on Tuesday a delegation of mayors and municipalities of Akkar who approved the creation of the landfill.
Implementing Shehayyeb's trash plan will start when a decision on creating a landfill in Bekaa is finalized completing a balanced chain to dump Beirut's waste in Naameh, Srar as well.
The minister's proposal calls for the reopening of the Naameh landfill whose closure on July 17 sparked the country's unprecedented garbage crisis.
It also envisions converting two existing dumps, in Srar and al-Masnaa, into sanitary landfills capable of receiving trash for more than a year.
However the location in east Lebanon's Masnaa area was scrapped after a study showed it would contaminate the groundwater.
After he announced his plan last month, the civil society and local residents of Akkar, Naameh, Majdal Anjar, and Bourj Hammoud protested against the step.
Experts have urged the government to devise a comprehensive waste management solution that would include more recycling and composting to reduce the amount of trash going into landfills.
Environmentalists fear the crisis could soon degenerate to the point where garbage as well as sewage will simply overflow into the sea from riverbeds as winter rains return.
Source: Naharnet
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