Residents and civil society activists staged a new sit-in Sunday outside the Naameh landfill to condemn government plans to reopen the controversial facility for seven days, vowing to unveil an alternative waste management plan on Monday.
“We do not like to obstruct projects but the state's promises are untruthful,” residents at the protest said in a statement, vowing an “open-ended sit-in” to prevent the reopening of the landfill “even for a single hour.”
The residents were joined by civil society activists from across Lebanon who heeded a joint call from the activist groups that have organized several demos since the July 17 closure of the landfill and the eruption of the unprecedented garbage crisis.
“The alternative plan envisages declaring an environmental state of emergency that would expose all cases of corruption and blackmail,” former minister Charbel Nahhas, a vocal member of the protest movement, announced.
He said the plan will be unveiled during a press conference that will be held Monday at 1:00 pm.
“We are not negative and tomorrow we will propose a plan that involves only one landfill instead of three,” Lebanon Eco Movement leader Paul Abi Rashed told reporters at the sit-in.
Experts have urged the government to devise a comprehensive waste management solution that would include more recycling and composting to reduce the amount of trash going into landfills.
Meanwhile, the mayor of the town of Baawarta described the plan devised by Agriculture Minister Akram Shehayyeb and a team of experts as “suspicious,” noting that involves the embezzlement of public funds worth $30 million.
He also urged the interior minister “not to use force to reopen the landfill,” warning that such a move would lead to “confrontations with security forces.”
“Our Lives are More Important than Your Gains!” and “Poor Regions Have Landfills but Not Hospitals”, read some of the banners that were carried by protesters.
Earlier in the day, activists and Majdal Anjar residents blocked the international highway leading to Syria in protest at government plans to set up a garbage landfill in the Eastern Mountain Range.
Also on Sunday, the residents of the town of Ain Drafil near the Naameh landfill expressed the readiness of their region to support Shehayyeb's plan.
They said during a press conference: “We responded positively to the minister's plan out of our sense of national responsibility.”
Shehayyeb has stressed that only partnership between authorities and the civil society would guarantee the success of the committee tasked with resolving the country's two-month long waste crisis.
A plan devised by Shehayyeb and a team of experts calls for reopening the Naameh landfill, which was closed in mid-July, for seven days to dump the garbage that accumulated in random sites in Beirut and Mount Lebanon.
It also envisions converting two existing dumps, in the northern Akkar area of Srar and the eastern border area of al-Masnaa, into “sanitary landfills” capable of receiving trash for more than a year.
After he announced his plan earlier this month, the civil society and local residents of Akkar, Naameh, Majdal Anjar, and Bourj Hammoud protested against the step.
Environmentalists fear the crisis could degenerate to the point where garbage as well as sewage will simply overflow into the sea from riverbeds as winter rains return.
The health ministry has warned that garbage scattered by seasonal winds could also block Lebanon's drainage system.
The trash crisis has sparked angry protests that initially focused on waste management but grew to encompass frustrations with water and electricity shortages and Lebanon's chronically divided political class.
Campaigns like "You Stink" brought thousands of people into the streets in unprecedented non-partisan and non-sectarian demonstrations against the entire political class.
