Twenty years ago, “Amrousiyeh” incinerator was burned, and shortly after that, Bourj Hammoud waste treatment center was closed… That is when the waste treatment national plan lost its core value. Unfortunately, officials did not feel any danger, or any need to amend the decision, and the result was the start of a distorted path that remained for around twenty years, and ended up with the closure of Naameh landfill… Its effects remain to this day.
During two weeks, waste treatment plants were put on fire in several Lebanese cities and villages, and this is a very unique phenomenon, because there is no geographical link between those places. There isn’t any declared reason for the burning of incinerators ranging from Baalbek to Mount Lebanon, then the North and South of Lebanon. This incident did not raise any severe reactions or questions among people, in a country that suffers from the scourge of wastes in it.
Is there a project being prepared for the whole country? Is there a new mafia getting ready today, in the light of awaited agreements with the advances – if they took place – regarding the presidency issue? Many questions are being raised, but the problem is still limiting the approach, while the latest concessions in the waste sector proved that it is still monopolized for the benefit a single party only, even if it had many labels, or if several companies registered in other countries were introduced, while it is the one that owns them.
Faced with this reality, which reminds us that the date for the deviation in the waste file goes back to the burning of “Amrousiyeh” incinerator – according to the proposal back then – Is what we are witnessing today from burning to closing waste treatment centers a preparation for something new we do not know about? The problem is that the visible size of the scandal is huge, but there are no protests against it, so how is the case for everything we do not see?
What is happening today is the postponement of the crisis’s explosion, and enlarging it, but it is not a solution in any way. Everything that is associated with these data, especially the burning of plants is weakening the decentralized solutions and the return of concentration is the biggest and most dangerous ways, amid silence that is similar to what the Lebanese and everyone else residing in this country is reaping due to pollution policies … and the official treatments for crises in it.
