By Mohammed Zaatari
SIDON, Lebanon: Following the
Cabinet’s approval of the Interior Ministry’s request to pay for the cost of
processing waste at Sidon’s recently completed treatment plant, sources say the
premises will be operational within two to three months.
Sources told The Daily Star that the
Cabinet has approved the ministry’s request to pay for the operating of the new
treatment plant using money from the independent municipal fund. They added
that the price of processing one ton of waste was agreed at $85 for the first
two years and $95 per ton for the third and fourth years.
In November 2002, Sidon municipality
signed a contract with IBC company setting out the terms for establishing and
operating a waste treatment plant for the Sidon and Zahrani areas.
In March 2012, IBC contacted the
municipality and said that it consented to the terms of the contract and to the
prices agreed for the treatment of waste.
According to the sources, the new
plant, which is located in Sinniq to the south of Sidon, is technically ready
and its crew is already in training.
They added that the plant has a very
high level of productivity and is capable of treating tons of Sidon and Zahrani
waste every day.
According to an official at the
independent municipal fund, the cost of operating the plant will be around $12
million per annum, some 13 times the annual revenue of the Zahrani-Sidon union
of municipalities, which totaled LL1.3 billion in 2010.
In addition, the cost of collecting
and transporting waste, which the union will pay to NTCC company, is estimated
at LL3,266,864 per month.
After discussion, the Cabinet
decided to approve the request to pay the cost, and asked Finance Minister
Mohammed Safadi along with Interior Minister Charbel to prepare a report on the
situation in the municipalities within one month.
For his part, Sidon Mayor Mohammed
Saudi described the receipt of official approval to operate the new plant as
“an important step that will speed up ridding the city of its chronic
environmental disaster and finally removing the dump.”
The plant’s completion came as yet
another fire broke out last week at Sidon’s municipal dump.
As the city’s municipality was busy
congratulating Sidon’s residents and thanking Charbel for contributing to the
completion of the treatment plant, municipal firefighters worked together with
the Army to extinguish the blaze, which burned for several hours.
It is not clear whether the incident
was caused by arson or because of high summer temperatures, according to the
sources.
However, all the sources agreed that
the time has come to rid the city of the dump, which has been an environmental
hazard for almost four decades.
With the ministry’s approval of the
cost of processing waste at the new plant, the closure of the dump comes one
step closer. The new treatment plant will only process new waste, but in doing
so it will divert garbage away from the existing dump.
Meanwhile, a separate waste
management project will see the eventual closure and removal of the dump.
This project includes the building
of a water barrier in the area southwest of the dump and the use of suitable
waste from it to reclaim some 550,000 square meters of land from the sea.
The project is funded jointly by Saudi Arabia
and the Lebanese government, and the land reclaimed will be used for economic
or tourist initiatives.http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Politics/2012/Aug-21/185176-new-sidon-waste-plant-to-be-operational-within-three-months.ashx#axzz245GhTCxA
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