Shehayyeb Announces 'Permanent' Closure of Naameh Dump at Midnight

Agriculture Minister Akram Shehayyeb announced on Wednesday that the Naameh landfill will be “permanently shut at midnight.”

He said during a press conference that the dump will then be transformed into a green space.

The closure will put an end to months of disputes over the dump that was reopened to resolve a waste management crisis that erupted in Lebanon in July 2015.

The crisis erupted when the dump was originally closed, but it was temporarily reopened for two months as part of a plan to tackle garbage disposal in the country.

Shehayyeb hoped that the closure of the dump, located south of Beirut, will pave the way to a successful transition period in the country that will lead to “permanent solutions to garbage disposal.”

With the closure, the dump would have received some 900,000 tons of trash that had accumulated throughout Lebanon during the eight-month trash crisis.

Naameh received the waste of Beirut and the Mount Lebanon region.

Preparations are underway to set up landfills at Bourj Hammoud and the Costa Brava site in Khalde to resolve the long-running waste management crisis.

There are fears that the plan may not be complete in time and that garbage might accumulate on the streets once again.

In March, the cabinet decided to establish the Costa Brava and Bourj Hammoud landfills and to reactivate the Naameh landfill for two months as part of a four-year plan to resolve the country’s waste problem.

Shehayyeb told al-Akhbar daily Wednesday that bids for tenders to establish the Costa Brava and Bourj Hammoud landfills will be announced soon.

The delay in finalizing the deals and the completion of the landfills trigger concern in light of the repercussions of the accumulating garbage in the locations allocated close to the two landfills, al-Akhbar said.

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

D.A./M.T.