Saida’s Garbage Experience: How a Mountain Became a Landfill


2016-10-07    |   

Saida’s Garbage Experience: How a Mountain Became a Landfill

For the past year, the cities and villages of Lebanon have been drowning in trash; the sight of it is enough to make a person shudder. Anyone who has followed the situation, however, might note the absence of the city of Saida and its surrounding villages from the picture, as though the city is in another country entirely. Saida is the major coastal city in southern Lebanon. No waste is piled up in Saida’s streets and waterways, accompanied by popular protests. The reason for this is a household waste treatment plant (to sort trash and process it with anaerobic digestion), which was established in 2008 and became operational in 2013. This plant accepts and treats waste from the city of Saida as well as villages to the east and south.

For a long time, it was presumed that officials in the Ministry of Environment and the Council for Development and Reconstruction would take note of Saida’s experience and benefit from it. It was also anticipated that they would address the crisis to which they brought the country, and work to build similar (but more advanced) waste processing plants in different regions in coordination with local government and associations of municipalities. Instead, they maintained a system of centralized waste treatment by a single company; it is known to have a very low rate of reclaiming materials after sorting (15%), and throwing the rest (85%) in the central al-Naima landfill. This had been going on for 18 years, with no end in sight, when the recent crisis erupted.

Today they are looking to Saida again, not to replicate the experience of its waste treatment plant, unfortunately, but rather to repeat its mistakes made in filling in the sea and building a sanitary landfill on top. The city was pushed into committing this mistake to avoid a greater evil: the huge mountain of waste that had been squatting on Saida’s shores and increasing in size for 35 years, spewing the toxic matter into its sea and air, and affecting the health of the city’s residents.

Taking a look back at how the seaside landfill came to be established in Saida, we can see a replica of parts of the same scenario currently playing out with the creation of seaside landfills in Costa Brava and Bourj Hammoud/Jdeideh. The one difference is that Saida paid its heaviest price before it set up its landfill (i.e., suffering the hardship of 35 years with its mountain of trash), whereas the other regions will pay for it after. What follows is a chronological explanation of Saida’s experience with waste disposal and the various components of its crisis. It is hoped that this material might help other regions determine for themselves what they want and what they must do.

A Mountain of Trash

In 1982, a garbage dump was started on public land on the southern shore of the city. At the time, Saida was under Israeli occupation and the dump served two necessary purposes: it consolidated the rubble resulting from Israeli attacks in the area, and it disposed of the waste accumulating within the city’s neighborhoods and surrounding villages.

With the passage of time, and in the absence of a state, what began as a temporary dump became a permanent one. Since it was located so close to the shore, it was constantly collapsing towards the water thus completely polluting the Lebanese coast. Parts of it were also burned, either accidentally or deliberately, producing toxic fumes that drifted to the city with southwesterly winds. Like many areas outside of Beirut and Mount Lebanon, the city was excluded from the centralized plan that depended on the al-Naima sanitary landfill, some 20km north of the city on the road to Beirut. Saida was left instead to throw all of its waste into a local dump.

At that time, the garbage dump in Saida was receiving 300 tons of waste per day from 15 municipalities, serving 250,000 people. By 2013, the mountain of trash was 1,500,000 cubic meters, of which 60% was made up of filler dirt added on top of successive layers of waste. It stretched 350 meters along the seaside edge, and its height ranged from 20 to 55 meters.

Building and Operating the Plant

In 1998, the idea of a household solid waste treatment plant emerged due to the initiative of an engineer in the private sector (namely, company IBC, Inc.). He presented the idea to the municipality of Saida, convincing them to build an advanced waste treatment plant. Until a solution could be found to dispose of the garbage mountain entirely, it could at least be a starting point for halting its growth.

On November 29, 2002, the Lebanese Cabinet issued Ordinance No, 33, granting the municipality of Saida a license to contract out the work of infilling the sea near Dakraman, at the southernmost point of the city next to the wastewater treatment plant, as well as building a waste treatment plant on the filled-in area (28,095 square meters) and the surrounding area. This was specified according to the conditions of the current contract between the municipality of Saida and IBC.

Once this was accomplished, and began treating waste, another ordinance was issued transferring the ownership of the filled-in land to be registered in the name of the contracted company, also in accordance with the contract. To guarantee the public interest envisaged from the treatment of waste, the ordinance confirmed that the company did not have the right to use the filled in land and what sat on top of it except for the purposes of treating solid household waste produced by the city of Saida and the surrounding areas.

The plant was built in 2008 but it was not operational for several years, for various administrative and technical reasons. The cost of constructing and equipping it rose from US$11 million to US$30 million because the initial estimates were incorrect. As a result of the financial difficulties, the plant’s owners withdrew their commitment to treat the city’s waste free of charge, as per the contract with the municipality. The municipality and political authorities renegotiated, altering the price per ton for treatment to a maximum of US$44, which became in effect US$95 per ton. The plant became operational at the same time as the closing of the garbage dump, the start of filling in the sea to create additional land, and setting up the landfill.

In terms of how the plant operates, the components are first sorted; recyclable and reusable materials are separated from organic matter. The latter is transferred to tanks to be processed through anaerobic digestion, which requires an environment free from oxygen. Organic or biological waste is broken down with the help of specific bacteria, usually in a high humidity environment. In the absence of oxygen, this produces a gas made up of methane and carbon dioxide. The gas produced in the digestion tanks generates two megawatts daily used for electric power at the plant. Any surplus power, out of the two megawatts is diverted to municipal use.

Material that cannot be processed in this way is called refuse, and classified as heavy or light. It includes glass, various kinds of debris, rubber, shoes, fabric, diapers, etc. In principle, this refuse material is harmless, as it does not interact with nature in a negative way so long as it has been cleaned, washed, and dried so that it is free of any organic material that it had been mixed with prior.

Once the plant was put into operation, however, a fundamental problem emerged: namely, the absence of a landfill specifically designated for depositing the refuse produced through the waste treatment process. The plant was not capable of recovering all the waste it received, and was in need of a landfill for disposing of these specific kinds of refuse (which is natural and expected in the world of waste treatment). The lack of a landfill, despite the municipality’s requests to authorities to ensure one, led the plant to resort to throw the remaining waste into the marine basin. This was done with the consent of the municipality.

The danger in this oversight is that the leftover waste materials are not pure refuse material as described above, but are mixed with organic waste. This makes them harmful when they seep into groundwater levels, as well as making them produce foul odors carried to the city on the wind. There is evidence that those responsible for the plant, the municipality, and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), are all aware of this oversight. This evidence lies in the burial of the leftover waste with rubble (at a ratio of ⅔ to ⅓), in order to minimize its environmental effects and its impact on people’s eyes. Yet if the refuse materials were truly stable and inert, they would not require such measures (see diagram).

On top of the continued filling-in of the marine basin near the plant using waste byproducts, its gradual transformation into a garbage dump, and the political authorities’ inability to ensure a sanitary landfill appropriate for this waste material, the Cabinet’s current plan involves sending 250 tons of garbage a day to the Saida plant. No doubt this will multiply the amount of waste thrown into marine basin each day. The plan is good news for the plant’s owners, whose profits will increase, but it will have adverse effects for the city, which has already suffered due to the ill-fated garbage dump.

A Failed Attempt to Get Rid of the Mountain

For years, the Lebanese state did nothing to remove the garbage dump, which became a veritable mountain. They presented no alternative to the municipalities near Saida, neither in al-Naima landfill nor elsewhere, that would allow for the halting of its growth. The first rain of October 2006 brought the city an arrangement for removing and treating the garbage dump. The humanitarian foundation of Prince Walid bin Talal provided a grant of US$5 million, and the Sharika Junub li-l-ʿImar (the Southern Building Company) was put in charge of implementation.

At that time, dealing with the mountain of garbage entailed sifting the waste and separating it from the dirt, then processing it. Sixty to seventy percent of its volume consisted of dirt and rubble, and an appropriate place had to be found for it after the waste was treated and the soil sifted and cleaned. The political authorities rejected moving the rubble in al-Naima landfill, arguing that it was impossible for the Sukleen garbage dump to absorb it. Curiously, however, this same dump continued to receive waste up until this year.

The municipality presented the Ministry of Environment with an alternative solution that would move the rubble to Zaghdraiya’s quarry, based on a study that concluded that this would be an appropriate place for rehabilitating the soil. The ministry agreed, considering this to solve three problems at once: rehabilitate the soil of Zaghdraiya’s quarry, solve the waste problem in Saida, and close an informal garbage dump that people nearby to the quarry had begun complaining about.

Yet, surprise political interference emerged based on regional sectarian calculations, preventing agreement on the suggested place for the rubble. Even though the region of Zaghdraiya benefits from the Saida garbage dump, it refused to be the entryway to a solution. Additionally, the state did not carry enough prestige to impose through its own means what it believes to be in the public interest.

The municipality suggested placing the rubble in an underwater trench in the ocean facing the beach, after making hydrodynamic scans to identify a site it claimed was appropriate. The ministry, however, rejected the suggestion, explaining –rightfully so– that the Barcelona Convention forbade disposing of debris in the ocean. The odd thing is that when the municipality protested, pointing out that this was similar to what Solidere had done in Beirut, the reply was that Solidere was not bound by the Barcelona Convention, “unlike you” (as the mayor explained, in an interview with the newspaper al-Balad, September 5, 2010).

The project ended, and the grant was frozen, and the mountain remained, taking on 150 tons daily of various kinds of waste from Saida and a number of villages considered to be within its geographical area. It was then that the municipality of Saida asked the remaining villages to find alternative solutions for their waste, and informal dumps and incinerators began to emerge across various local municipalities.

The Seawall and the Sanitary Landfill

All attempts to stop the growth of the mountain or dispose of it failed. This was due to several key factors, starting with the weakness of the state and its inability to plan and implement solutions, or to impose them. The polarized sectarian situation, which increased significantly over the past decade, also contributed to the failure of these solutions. This has caused some areas to turn their backs on one another, despite being neighbors and sharing common interests. Finally, political bickering between politicians within the city and outside of it, including across the divide between the March 8 and March 14 alliances, brought about the blocking of solutions for political gain.

With the advent of municipal elections in 2010 and the municipality’s total failure to make progress regarding the mountain, Mohammad al-Saudi was elected as the new mayor. He arrived armed with a project that would solve the mountain, backed with US$20 million in Saudi money. The project’s total cost was US$28.9 million; the state treasury paid the difference.

The project called for the construction of a seawall forming an arc 2,100 meters long, extending north from the mountain of garbage and south from the household waste treatment plant. Behind it would be an area for rubble, 550 square meters, of which 100,000 meters would be used in the initial phase for a sanitary landfill (in exchange for the mountain of trash). In a subsequent phase, the remaining area was to be filled in, although this has not been done yet except with the refuse from the plant (see diagram). In April 2011, the Khoury Contracting Company began working on the project.

Meanwhile, the French Suez-Environment Company won the bid to build a sanitary waste plant, although nothing has been heard about the company since the work started. The company working on the ground has been Jihat al-Arab (JCC). All in all, the project is worth US$25 million, of which US$20 million was provided by the state treasury, with the remainder provided through a gift from the Walid Ibn Talal Foundation, which has been frozen since 2004. The UNDP was the consultant for the project.

The implementation of both of these projects –the seawall and the transformation of the garbage dump into a modern landfill– took place at the same time, and overlapped, as the former relied upon components of the latter. The Ministry of Environment, in its study evaluating the environmental effects of the seawall project, determined which raw materials would be permitted for use as rubble to fill in the first stage of the marine basin (100,000 meters), where the landfill would be established. They described these as follows: “The use of raw materials to be used in works for marine protection are restricted to those mentioned below, in order. Natural marine materials will not be used, so that these materials/fillers are in keeping with appropriate standards for landfill operations at sea: rubble present in the Saida garbage dump, rubble resulting from the demolition of buildings and structures as a result of the July 2006 Israeli aggression, rubble resulting from informal garbage dumps, rubble from construction sites, and stone quarries registered according to Ordinance No. 8803 of October 4, 2002.”

By listing the rubble present in the Saida garbage dump as the first source of permitted materials, the ministry opened the door wide to the contractor (JCC) to fill in the sea (the area contained behind the seawall) with the materials currently in the mountain of trash; and, claiming that it has been sorted between clean and waste materials. Yet photographic documentation of their operation shows bulldozers taking scoops from the mountain and simply tossing it into the sea. Of course, the municipality and the consultant have covered up this gross violation.

The direct result, however, is that the mountain has been eaten away with blinding speed, over a time period of about one year; which contradicted all the initial estimates. The sanitary landfill has been established on top of this level of rubble, concealing everything below.

As controversy increased in the city surrounding the contractor’s practices and the corruption among those in charge of the project, the mayor presented the residents of Saida with a surprise as the work on the landfill was ending: 35,000 square meters of the filled in area would be a well-furnished public park with plants, trees, a cement amphitheater, and paved paths. The park, adjacent to the 65,000 square meter landfill, would be paid for by the contractor. The park was not part of the original project, but it seems that the mayor needed it to quell those opposed to the project, and made the contractor do it. Thus the slogan emerged: “We made the [trash] mountain into a park.” The park was named after the mayor, Mohammed al-Saudi Park.

As for green space above the landfill, it is covered with artificial grass and it will be inaccessible for some years until its contents are processed, and all the buried gases inside are gone.

Meanwhile, in Bourj Hammoud and Jdeideh

The surface of the landfill in Saida rises eight meters high – the equivalent of a two-story building; it stretches nearly 350 meters along the shore on the south side of the city. In the past, when the city’s inhabitants tolerated the mountain of garbage there, it was as high as 50 meters. When it comes to areas of Bourj Hammoud and Jdeideh, however, the scene is like a caricature. In the plan leaked by MP Samy Gemayel (see photo), the two landfills, which, like on the northern outskirts of Beirut, look like lungs exhaling their gases into the residential areas before them, completely blocking the coast of both areas (a stretch about 2.5 kms long). Covering these with green artificial grass will not deceive anyone, as the two landfills will be closed areas for at least a decade. It is worth noting that the area of the original Bourj Hammoud garbage dump slated for burial, unlike the garbage mountain in Saida, is a small part of the total area of the landfill designated for the area.

The final irony in all this lies in the fact that Saida “swallowed” its landfill as an alternative to its mountain of trash. Yet the people of Bourj Hammoud and Jdeideh must accept the landfill and live with it forever. The landfill signifies all the political, administrative, and environmental failures of the ruling authorities and the political class. The people living in these areas must pay the bill for this failure, on behalf of all Lebanese. It is a travesty.

This article is an edited translation from Arabic.

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