Report: Trash Crisis Looms in Metn and Keserwan

The trash management file has returned back to the spotlight after a deal to transport garbage from the streets of Metn, Keserwan and parts of the capital Beirut went to a halt due to the closure of the Bourj Hammoud storage location.

Trash is accumulating once again on the streets of Metn, Keserwan and a small section of Beirut that are included in the trash deal to transport garbage to a temporary site in Bourj Hammoud, said al-Akhbar daily on Saturday.

The Tashnag party and the municipality of Bourj Hammoud have decided to close the location “until the completion of the project set to implement a landfill in Bourj Hammoud.”

The location has been closed for three days now, without any clear solution in the horizon, added the daily.

“The town is drowning in its own garbage,” Municipal chief of Zouk Mikael Elie Beaino told the daily.

“The municipality is incapable of finding solutions to remove the trash. We don’t have properties suitable for temporary storage,” he added.

Kataeb party students forced the work to a halt at the landfill early in August and demanded the halt to what they alleged “the project of land-filling the sea with garbage on Metn's coast.”

Lebanon's unprecedented trash management crisis erupted in July 2015 after the closure of the central Naameh landfill which was receiving the waste of Beirut and Mount Lebanon.

The months-long crisis, which sparked protests against the entire political class, saw streets, forests and riverbanks overflowing with waste and the air filled with the smell of rotting and burning garbage.

The cabinet eventually decided to establish two landfills in Costa Brava and Bourj Hammoud and to reactivate the Naameh landfill for two months as part of a four-year plan despite the rejection of many residents and civil society activists.

A landfill’s location in the Chouf and Aley areas would be determined later following consultations with the local municipalities, the cabinet said at the time.