BEIRUT: Two years after the worst oil spill in the east Mediterranean left thousands of tonnes of crude over three-quarters of Lebanon’s coast, the beaches are almost clean but the troubles continue.

In July 2006, in the midst of the month-long war between Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah fighters, Israeli aircraft bombed a coastal power plant at Jiyeh, 40 kilometres south of Beirut.

Around 15,000 tonnes of oil flooded into the sea and was carried by the current, leaving 150 kilometres of coastline covered with thick black residue.

The once glitzy tourist beaches were covered with a film of filthy discharge and the breathtaking azure sea was blackened with oily deposits.

Now after two years of dedicated effort, the Mediterranean has recovered its blue and the white sandy beaches are back to their sparkling former glory.

Only the Jozor al-Nakhel, or Palm Tree Island, nature reserve, west of the northern town of Tripoli is still being cleaned.

But the impact of the spill remains a headache for Lebanon.

At Jiyeh beach, more than 800 tonnes of oil-covered rocks and sand sit in huge heavy-duty plastic bags, only metres from the water’s edge waiting for someone to work out how to get rid of them.

The lines of bags stretch along the beach, with some having spilled open, oozing sticky black trails down into the soft sand.

“Each one of these bags holds two tonnes,” said Mohammed Sarji, whose Bahr Lubnan (Sea of Lebanon) association has been working to clean the south coast beaches. “They are extremely durable but they are not designed to sit here in the sun, wind and rain for two years.” He added that the fuel ends up being absorbed by the soil and then filters into the ground water.

“It is a crime,” Sarji said.

“The sea is clean but another aspect of the environment is being destroyed by neglecting this waste,” he said. “The locals have threatened to move the waste to another site where it would damage other soil, or to burn it, which would cause a different ecological disaster due to the toxic fumes that would be released.”—AFP