“It’s the last open beach in Jiyyeh, and it has some of the best waves around in Lebanon,” said California-bred Ali Elamine, the founder of Surf Lebanon, a school offering surfing and stand-up paddling lessons there since 2012. “They’re such high-performance waves that we’re trying to push it to where they’re recognizable by everyone in the world,” he told The Daily Star, acknowledging that “there aren’t a lot of people that know Lebanon gets good waves.” “That whole stretch of Jiyyeh is very exposed to southerly swells,” Elamine added, estimating that around a dozen different waves wash up on Jiyyeh’s 7-km shoreline. But its surfing potential stands to be threatened by a property developer who may have designs on the sea, Elamine alleges. About 100 meters away from the shoreline, just behind the parking area, is a barren private plot of land walled off on three sides. Lords Development Company, which bought several properties to assemble the 30,000-square-meter plot, plans to build a resort named Costa D’Oro, with a 150-room hotel and 144 chalets, according to co-owner Jihad Hassan. Early this year, Elamine and local residents caught wind that the developer planned to build a jetty parallel to the plot’s southern border. He also spotted men on the beach and in the water measuring the GPS coordinates along the line extending from the border. “[The developer] wants to take over the 100 meters between him and the [shoreline] … creating a property line by creating a jetty,” Elamine alleged. “The jetty would block out any swells and sit right over a wave,” he said, arguing it would damage the nascent sport of surfing in Lebanon. “No one is going to swim there because the reef [would be] too shallow; the water won’t come around,” he added. The Environment Ministry received a scoping report in February 2014 about the planned resort, according to Sabine Ghosn, head of a three-person technical committee at the ministry charged with reviewing the project. “Every project … done on the beach needs an environmental study” prepared by a government-approved consultancy, Ghosn told The Daily Star. The scoping report is a kind of “pre-study” required by the ministry to assess a project’s potential. Once this is approved by the ministry, the developer must submit a full-fledged study called an Environmental Impact Assessment. Ghosn said there was no mention of plans for a jetty in Lords’ scoping report or EIA, the latter which was submitted in July 2014. But during the committee’s field visit, which is part of assessing the scoping report, “the owner was saying we might have a jetty.” “Usually we don’t take verbal things as formal, but we needed to take this into consideration,” Ghosn said, noting that in its official response to the scoping report, the committee clearly stipulated that the resort must be restricted to the private plot and not affect the shoreline, sea or other parts of the public domain. “Usually when you have a project on the beach, you are concerned about the public domain … you don’t want people to be denied their right to have free access to this beach,” she added. To approve the scoping report, the ministry also requested and received from Lords a signed pledge that it would not use the public domain, according to Ralph Salameh, another member of the technical committee. “We are not building any jetty nor do we have plans to do so,” Lords co-owner Hasan told The Daily Star, in remarks translated from Arabic. He acknowledged, “Yes, we started working on land, but we do not want to do anything in the sea.” Jetty or no jetty, that work on the land is another major point of contention. Early this year, Elamine and local residents informed Ghosn that excavations had begun inside the plot, along with their concerns about a jetty. They worry such violations are perhaps an indication of more to come. During a site visit in June, The Daily Star saw that excavations had begun in a few parts of the plot, including a clearly defined rectangular section more than 100 feet in length and at least 1 meter deep. Two construction cranes were also parked inside. While The Daily Star later brought up that any digging or building is prohibited until the EIA is approved by the Environment Ministry, Hasan cited approval from the Culture Ministry’s Directorate-General of Antiquities. “We are excavating in the ground now, backed by the Culture Ministry, just digging to see if we have ruins.” Hasan added that the digging was supervised by representatives of the directorate and had been suspended due to the discovery of two walls, which the directorate was currently assessing for their significance. Citing the Environment Ministry’s legal department, Ghosn said any digging was “100 percent illegal.” Law 444, the environmental code introduced in 2002, specifies that a company wishing to “implement a project that needs an EIA … needs to wait until the final approval of the Environment Ministry,” she added. While a developer is required to report the presence of ancient ruins in its EIA, Ghosn said there was no need for Lords to conduct excavations to meet this requirement, as the committee “saw there are ruins very close to the site.” Ghosn is aware of the Culture Ministry’s approval, which was documented in Lords’ scoping report. But she said it was not a matter of the ministries operating according to conflicting rules, but rather that the owner had yet to meet the requirements of each concerned ministry. “It’s the owner’s responsibility to get all the approvals from all related ministries before starting any implementations,” she said. The drawn-out approval for the EIA is in part due to Lords submitting an addendum only in May following a request late last year. It is still missing information, Ghosn said, and the ministry sent Lords another request a few weeks ago. Ghosn only recently clarified to Elamine the process of filing an official complaint with the ministry. Only upon receiving it can the committee conduct a site inspection to verify allegations of wrongdoing. Both she and Salameh acknowledged that while laws are in place, enforcement is weak. The Environment Ministry doesn’t have an enforcement body, they said, and it would simply inform the governor and Interior Ministry to take action on violations. “There is an issue of these resorts being established everywhere on the shoreline,” Ghosn said, lamenting that “we don’t have public spaces anymore.” While the sea and beaches legally remain part of the public domain, resorts often erect barriers to the stretch where they operate or crowd the shoreline with chairs, effectively discouraging public access. Elamine says his key concern is “trying to protect the waves from damage.” He does not mind the presence of the Costa D’Oro resort, as long as Lords does not build a jetty or otherwise intrude upon the public domain. Jiyyeh is “definitely one of the best” places to surf in the country, he added, saying that he hopes to turn Lebanon into a “surfing destination.” – Additional reporting by Jude Massaad. Alexis Lai| The Daily Star
