1. Finance and Budget Committee Tackles Trash File, Kanaan Refuses Turning Metn into Dumpster إ
2. Report: Trash Plan Setback in Metn and Keserwan Sees a Solution
3. Trash Collection Crisis Looms as Sukleen Says Municipality Blocking Access to Bourj Hammoud Site
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Finance and Budget Committee Tackles Trash File, Kanaan Refuses Turning Metn into Dumpster

The parliamentary Finance and Budget Committee kicked off a meeting on Monday to address the trash crisis in the presence of related ministers and representatives of the Council for Development and Reconstruction.

“The solution that the government came out with is not a perfect one. There is a need to implement administrative decentralization in this file,” said Head of the Committee MP Ibrahim Kanaan after the meeting.

“We have decided to invite the union of the municipalities concerned with the trash file to attend the Committee’s meeting next Wednesday,” he added.

“We do not want to turn the Metn coast into a dumpster, nor do we want to turn our streets into a dumpster. We are open to all solutions.”

“We need a transitional phase until administrative decentralization is implemented. Our project is the total liberation of the municipalities’ jurisdictions as an independent authority,” remarked Kanaan.

Earlier, Kanaan told An Nahar daily that the meeting would provide an opportunity to view all the ideas and objections in the presence of Minister of Agriculture Akram Shehayyeb, MP Sami Gemayel, MP Agop Pakradonian and CDR representatives.

“Our first concern is not to leave garbage in the streets and secondly is to prevent the transformation of the Metn coast into a dumpster. Supposing the government’s plan is incomplete then we must complete and modify it,” he told the daily.

“We seek a broader plan based on the establishment of power plants for the reproduction of energy from waste, decentralization of trash treatment which requires years of preparation meaning that we are in dire need of a phased plan and control in execution,” added the MP.

For his part, Shehayyeb is expected to reaffirm adherence to the government’s trash plan, said the daily and added that the Minister will hold those who reject it the responsibility of the trash crisis in the areas of Ashrafieh, Metn and Keserwan.

Last week, the trash management plan witnessed a setback and the waste started accumulating once again in the streets of Metn, Keserwan and a small section of Beirut after protesters closed the Bourj Hammoud landfill.

Kataeb party students forced the work to a halt at the landfill and demanded the halt to what they alleged “the project of land-filling the sea with garbage on Metn’s coast.”

Lebanon’s unprecedented trash management crisis erupted in July 2015 after the closure of the Naameh landfill, which was receiving the waste of Beirut and Mount Lebanon.

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

On March 12, the cabinet decided to establish two landfills in Costa Brava and Bourj Hammoud and to reactivate the Naameh landfill for two months as part of a four-year plan to resolve the country’s waste problem despite the rejection of many residents and civil society activists.

http://www.naharnet.com/stories/en/215535-finance-and-budget-committee-tackles-trash-file-kanaan-refuses-turning-metn-into-dumpster
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Report: Trash Plan Setback in Metn and Keserwan Sees a Solution
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A plan to collect the trash that has been accumulating on the streets in the northern districts of Metn and Keserewan lately will be put into implementation either today or on Tuesday, An Nahar daily reported on Monday.

The trash management plan, which saw a setback after protesters closed a location in the area of Bourj Hammoud used to store the waste, will resume and the trash will be collected in relatively remote areas, added the daily.

The plan will be put into implementation pending an expected solution that will see the garbage transferred to the landfill of Bourj Hammoud with a clear commitment from the government to implement an integrated environmental plan for sorting, processing and land-filling, it added.

A deal to transport garbage from the streets of Metn, Keserwan and parts of the capital Beirut went to a halt recently due to the closure of the Bourj Hammoud storage location.

Trash started accumulating once again on the streets of Metn, Keserwan and a small section of Beirut that are included in the trash deal to transport garbage to a temporary site in Bourj Hammoud.

Early in August, Kataeb party students forced the work to a halt at the landfill and demanded the halt to what they alleged “the project of land-filling the sea with garbage on Metn’s coast.”

Lebanon’s unprecedented trash management crisis erupted in July 2015 after the closure of the central Naameh landfill which was receiving the waste of Beirut and Mount Lebanon.

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

The cabinet eventually decided to establish two landfills in Costa Brava and Bourj Hammoud and to reactivate the Naameh landfill for two months as part of a four-year plan despite the rejection of many residents and civil society activists.

A landfill’s location in the Chouf and Aley areas would be determined later following consultations with the local municipalities, the cabinet said at the time.

http://www.naharnet.com/stories/en/215520-report-trash-plan-setback-in-metn-and-keserwan-sees-a-solution
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Trash Collection Crisis Looms as Sukleen Says Municipality Blocking Access to Bourj Hammoud Site
by Naharnet Newsdesk

A new waste collection crisis seems to be looming on the horizon after the Sukleen firm announced Wednesday that its trucks would stop transferring trash to the Bourj Hammoud site due to the municipality’s decision to block access to the location.

“Due to the inability to transfer waste from the areas mentioned in our contract to the temporary storage site in Bourj Hammoud, which resulted from a decision by the municipality to block access to the site’s entrance, the firm has informed the Council for Development and Reconstruction (CDR) that it will no longer be able to collect and transfer waste from the aforementioned areas,” Sukleen said in a statement.

It added that it is awaiting “instructions from the CDR in this regard.”

Agriculture Minister Akram Shehayyeb, who is in charge of overseeing the government’s emergency waste management plan, had warned Tuesday that the alternative to the plan would be the return of the waste management crisis that Lebanon witnessed last year, which saw piles of trash invading the country’s streets, forests and riverbanks.

He also revealed that Bourj Hammoud’s municipal chief had informed the CDR that the municipality would not allow the dumping of waste at the site as of Wednesday should works to establish a landfill remain suspended, out of fear that the piles of waste would become a “mountain of garbage” that poses health and environmental risks to the region.

Protesters from the Kataeb Party and civil society groups have been staging a sit-in for several days now outside the site and on August 11 they forced the suspension of works aimed at establishing a seaside garbage landfill there.

Kataeb chief MP Sami Gemayel has recently warned of health and environmental risks resulting from the dumping of unsorted and unrecycled waste at the Bourj Hammoud site, noting that “it is easy to find alternatives through endorsing a decentralized waste management plan.”

The country’s unprecedented waste management crisis erupted in July last year when the country’s central landfill in Naameh was closed amid the government’s failure to find alternatives.

http://www.naharnet.com/stories/en/215297-trash-collection-crisis-looms-as-sukleen-says-municipality-blocking-access-to-bourj-hammoud-site