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  Yahoo News 19 Aug 06
Clean-up crews recover some of massive Lebanon oil spill

Yahoo News 17 Aug 06
Lebanon to receive 'urgent' assistance with massive oil spill
by John Hadoulis

BBC 17 Aug 06
UN agrees Med oil spill plan

PlanetArk 15 Aug 06
Lebanon to Start Mopping Up Oil Spill this Week
Story by Lin Noueihed

BBC 8 Aug 06
'Damage is done' to Lebanon coast
By Mark Kinver Science and nature reporter, BBC News

Yahoo News 8 Aug 06
Lebanese oil spill could rival Exxon Valdez disaster: UN

NAIROBI (AFP) - An oil spill caused by Israeli raids on a Lebanese power plant could rival the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster that despoiled the Alaskan coast if not urgently addressed, the United Nations has said.

The Nairobi-based UN Environment Programme (UNEP) said Tuesday the spill that poses severe ecological and human threats is already comparable to a 1999 oil tanker accident off the coast of France and had the potential to get far worse.

"In the worst-case scenario and if all the oil contained in the bombed power plant at Jiyyeh leaked into the Mediterranean Sea, the Lebanese oil spill could well rival the Exxon Valdez disaster of 1989," it said in a statement. "We are dealing with a very serious incident and any practical steps are still constrained by the continuation of hostilities," UNEP chief Achim Steiner said in a blunt appeal for immediate cooperation to stem any damage.

"While I fully understand the complexity and political implications, many are appalled ... there has been no on-the-ground assessment to support the Lebanese government, no moves possible towards a clean-up and indeed few practical measures to contain the further spread of the slick," he said.

UNEP said 12,000 tonnes of leaking oil from the Jiyyeh plant, which was bombed by Israel on July 14 and July 15 a few days into its offensive against Hezbollah in Lebanon, had already polluted more than 140 kilometers (87 miles) of the Lebanese coast and spread north into Syrian waters.

The Exxon Valdez spilled 37,000 tonnes of oil into Alaska's Prince William Sound after running aground on a reef on March 24, 1989, causing massive damage from which some scientists argue the area has yet to completely recover.

UNEP said two environmental experts had arrived in Syria to begin assessing the impact of the Jiyyeh spill, which it said it feared had already affected marine life, particularly tuna and turtles, in the Mediterrean.

"This oil slick definitely poses a threat to biodiversity," said Ezio Amato, one of the two UNEP consultants.

Earlier Tuesday in Rome, an Italian environmental agency which monitors the Mediterranean said the spill posed a heightened risk of cancer.

The leakage "is a high-risk toxic cocktail made up of substances which cause cancer and damage to the endocrine system," Simonetta Lombardo of Info-Rac told reporters. "It is not oil that has flowed but fuel for power stations," she said. "This contains substances such as benzene, categorised as a Class 1 carcinogen."

Info-Rac monitors compliance with the so-called Barcelona Convention, drawn up in 1976 and designed to protect the Mediterranean. So far some 22 countries have signed up to the text.

BBC 8 Aug 06
'Damage is done' to Lebanon coast
By Mark Kinver Science and nature reporter, BBC News

Lebanon's coastline could take up to 10 years to recover from a massive oil spill, the nation's environment minister has said.

Yacoub Sarraf said it was impossible to tackle the problem while the conflict between Hezbollah and Israel continued. Marine experts have warned the spill could pose a cancer risk to people living in the affected areas.

The oil slick caused by Israeli bombing of a power station now covers 120km (75 miles) of the region's coasts. Mr Sarraf said the delay had already severely affected the Lebanese shores.

"The damage has been done. It goes without saying that the whole fishing community will be hit for at least two or three years before the ecosystem re-establishes itself," he told BBC News.

"The tourism sector has also been hit for one or two seasons, and I am being very optimistic. "But worse, if we do not intervene as soon as possible, the spill that is still floating off the coast of Lebanon could return and hit the shores again."

Mr Sarraf added that until there was a ceasefire, it would be impossible to begin any clean-up operation. "We cannot get equipment, companies, labour or know-how to handle the problem," he said. "If you compare this to any spill in history, intervention can help within the first 48-72 hours of the spill; we are already 20 days too late."

'Cancer risk'

Marine experts from Inforac, an organisation with links to the United Nations Environment Programme (Unep), issued a warning on Tuesday that the raid on the Jiyyeh Power plant in mid-July could pose a cancer risk to people living in the area.

Spokeswoman Simonetta Lombardo said the spill of fuel oil was a "high-risk toxic cocktail made up of substances which cause cancer and damage to the endocrine system". The experts warned that the first people at risk from the "toxic spray" were the two million inhabitants of Beirut.

They also said that large quantities of dead fish along Lebanon's shores had been killed by the oil pollution.

A spokeswoman for Unep's Mediterranean Action Plan (MAP) said it was too early to judge the impact of the pollution on the area's environment. "It is premature to derive any conclusion on the type of oil and the potential health impacts before having conducted a sample analysis of the spill," said Luisa Colasimone. "No conclusion can be done at this stage before we have people on the ground". She added that a team of UN experts had arrived in Syria on Tuesday and one of their tasks would be to take samples of the oil spill.

Basma Badran, a Beirut-based spokeswoman for Greenpeace, said no clean-up operation would get under way until workers' safety could be guaranteed. "It is an extremely risky task to make the proper assessment while under fire," she told BBC News. "Several countries are on stand-by to send technical and expert assistance if the safety of their supplies and teams can be guaranteed."

Ms Badran added that international help was essential because the Lebanese authorities lacked any capacity to deal with such a large spill. The Lebanese environment minister said the latest satellite images showed the oil slick was continuing to spread across the eastern Mediterranean Sea, threatening the coastlines of Turkey and possibly Cyprus.

However, a spokesman for Turkey's prime minister said the risk to the country's shores was "fairly limited", but aircraft were carrying out regular monitoring flights and that naval vessels were ready to deploy floating barriers if needed.

PlanetArk 15 Aug 06
Lebanon to Start Mopping Up Oil Spill this Week
Story by Lin Noueihed

BEIRUT - Lebanon will on Tuesday start mopping up 10,000-15,000 tonnes of oil that spilled into the Mediterranean Sea and covered the coast with sludge after Israel bombed a power plant over a month ago.

Clean up efforts had so far been hampered by fighting between Israel and Hizbollah guerrillas, but despite a truce that began on Monday, an ongoing Israeli sea and air blockade continues to slow the arrival of equipment and experts.

"We are starting the clean-up operations as soon as tomorrow but the ceasefire has nothing to do with it ... The blockade is still on so we cannot go into the sea yet," Environment Minister Yacoub Sarraf told Reuters. "So, we are going to start operations in Byblos port and we are still waiting for the embargo to be cleared."

Sarraf has called the spill the biggest environmental catastrophe in Lebanon's history and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has compared it with a 1999 disaster off the coast of France, when the Erika tanker spilled an estimated 13,000 tonnes of oil into the Atlantic Ocean.

Israeli jets hit storage tanks at the Jiyyeh plant south of Beirut on July 13 and 15. Sarraf said satellite images indicated that it would cost at least US$100 million to clean up, and that the longer the delay, the more areas it would reach and the harder to clean.

"We are working in parallel with Cyprus and UNEP to try to define it," he said. "We are meeting in Athens on Thursday to try to ... get an OK to go in the sea and survey it physically."

Two UN experts arrived in Syria on Aug. 8 to assess the spill that has reached 140 km (87 miles) of Lebanese coastline and the Syrian shore. European Union experts arrived last week.

MARINE LIFE THREATENED

The spill threatens marine species such as Bluefin tuna and sea turtles, ecologists and UNEP say, including the green turtle which is endangered in the Mediterranean.

"This oil slick definitely poses a threat to biodiversity," said Ezio Amato, a biology expert at Italy's ICRAM marine research institute which works with UNEP. "Because tuna eggs ... float on the water surface, they can be directly affected by this oil slick with potential serious consequences for the tuna population in the Mediterranean."

Black sludge has settled on the rocks, seabed and sand, including Ramlet al-Baida, one of the few white sandy beaches left in Beirut and where local ecologists say turtles nest. Turtle eggs hatch in July and with the oil in the way, baby turtles will be unable to get to deep water in time.

Green Line, a local conservation group, is beginning its clean-up at a small fishing harbour off Beirut on Wednesday.

It complains the spill has also caused economic damage by robbing fishermen of their livelihoods and discouraging tourism. "Hydrocarbon has been accumulating in marine life so in some areas the fish will be contaminated. The effects will last for at least six years," said Green Line's Wael Hmaidan.

Kuwait and Norway have sent chemicals and equipment to clean up the oil, mostly heavy fuel which is tough to remove.

"How damaging? I wish it was quantifiable. You have more evaporation of toxic waste, more dispersion of the slick, more poisonous soluble materials going in the sea," he said. "The chemical damage is already done."

Yahoo News 17 Aug 06
Lebanon to receive 'urgent' assistance with massive oil spill
by John Hadoulis

PIRAEUS, Greece (AFP) - International experts promised Lebanon immediate help in cleaning up a massive Mediterranean oil spill caused by Israeli bombing of a power plant, but said the scale of the environmental threat remained unknown.

Senior officials from the United Nations, the European Union and regional states meeting in the Greek port city of Piraeus unveiled a plan to clean up oil-clogged parts of the Lebanese coastline -- an operation slated to cost over 50 million euros (64 million dollars).

The plan, supervised by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the International Maritime Organisation (IMO), prescribes immediate aerial surveys by helicopter and a joint effort to clean up to 30 coastal sites in Lebanon.

UNEP and IMO officials said on Thursday that determining the oil spill's exact size and composition was a top priority in order to establish the nature of the threat, as inspection crews had no access to the affected area before Monday's ceasefire between Israeli forces and the Hezbollah militia.

"We cannot tell you with any accuracy what amount of oil remains off shore on the sea," UNEP executive director Achim Steiner told a news conference, after meeting with ministers from Lebanon, Cyprus, Syria and Turkey. "We have been condemned to work with satellite images and ad hoc observations because access to the area has been impossible in terms of aerial surveys and... (the collection of) water samples," he said.

Steiner said it was a matter of "utter urgency" to establish the size of the oil spill and to coordinate equipment, experts and financial support from donors. Israel was not represented at the meeting, but is in close contact with UNEP on the issue, Steiner added.

"This was not a political meeting, it concerned the countries that are, or could be affected (by the pollution)," Frederic Hebert, director of the Regional Marine Pollution Emergency Response Centre for the Mediterranean, told AFP.

As the experts held their meeting in Piraeus, a few dozen volunteers in Beirut -- armed only with shovels and plastic buckets -- struggled to scrape oil-stained sand off a local beach as environmental groups began the monumental task of cleaning up tons of oil spilt along Lebanon's coast.

"We're trying to move as much sand as possible today and tomorrow so we'll know how many days it will take" to clean Ramlet el-Bayda beach, said Nina Jamal of the Lebanese environmental group Green Line.

UNEP estimates that between 10,000 and 15,000 tonnes of fuel oil leaked from an electric plant bombed by Israel last month, polluting some 150 kilometers (93 miles) of the Lebanese coast and spreading north into Syrian waters.

Lebanon has identified some 30 coastal areas affected by the spill, including the historical port of Byblos and the Palm Island nature reserve. Authorities have warned the oil could reach all the countries on the western Mediterranean.

In the absence of reliable information on the Lebanese coast pollution, the clean-up cost has been estimated at 50 million euros for 2006. The estimate is partly based on the compensation package for the Haven incident, a crude oil spill of over 10,000 tonnes that contaminated the coasts of Liguria and Provence in Italy and France in 1991.

A dozen countries have so far promised Lebanon to donate money, equipment and research expertise, including Algeria, Cyprus, Denmark, Egypt, France, Greece, Italy, Morocco, Norway, Slovenia and Spain.

Syria, which has also seen tar balls wash onto its shores, said it will put its "capabilities at the disposal of the Lebanese government as soon as the circumstances allow."

The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries has also pledged support with an immediate donation of 200,000 dollars, Steiner said. Meanwhile France on Thursday dispatched six tonnes of equipment to help break up the oil, including pumps and high-pressure cleaners, shipped from the northwest Brittany region.

Lying next to the busy shipping route of the English Channel, Brittany has seen a number of oil slicks over recent decades and has considerable resources for coping with them.

BBC 17 Aug 06
UN agrees Med oil spill plan

UN officials have drawn up an action plan to tackle a huge oil spill along the Lebanese and Syrian coastline.

Experts estimate that the initial clear-up will cost 50m euros (£34m), with more funds required next year. The plan calls for immediate aerial surveys to assess the extent of the damage and a workforce of 300 people to tackle the worst-affected sites.

The measures were agreed at a meeting in Greece attended by Lebanon, Syria, Greece, Turkey and the EU.

The executive director of the environment programme at the United Nations, Achim Steiner, said it was a sad fact that the environment was a victim of the conflict.

"Now the bombs have stopped and the guns have been silenced we have a chance to rapidly assess the true magnitude of the problem and finally mobilise the support for an oil clean-up and a restoration of the coastline," he said in a statement. "The experts are on standby and today the international community have agreed on an action plan.

"I sincerely hope we have secured the financial backing to swiftly and comprehensively deliver on this promise to the Lebanese people, on this request to the UN for assistance from the Lebanese authorities."

Concerted effort Up to 15,000 tonnes of oil poured into the Mediterranean Sea last month after Israeli forces bombed a power station. Marine experts were unable to visit the worst affected areas while the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah continued, but Monday's ceasefire allowed them to begin on-the-ground assessments.

Local environmental and conservation groups said that some of the oil had settled on the sea floor, threatening areas where tuna spawn. They also voiced concern that slicks on beaches would prevent young green turtles, an endangered species, from reaching the sea after they had hatched.

The meeting in Piraeus, which was hosted by the Greek Maritime Minister Manolis Kefaloyannis, agreed on measures to tackle pollution affecting shorelines in Lebanon and Syria.

Priorities include: Recovery of floating oil in ports, harbours and the most heavily polluted sites Testing of oil samples to see if they contain persistent organic pollutants, which are a potential risk to human health Protection of sensitive areas such as nesting sites for birds and turtles, World Heritage Sites and tourist locations

The talks were co-chaired by UN Environment Programme (Unep) executive director Achim Steiner and Efthimios Mitropoulos, secretary general of the International Maritime Organization (IMO).

Mr Mitropoulos said the action plan set the stage for wide-ranging assistance needed by the Lebanese and Syrian authorities. "I sincerely hope that the damage to the environment is contained to the current level and that other Mediterranean Sea countries do not suffer as a result of the oil spill, also that we can all learn a lot from this tragic incident and take these lessons forward so we are better prepared in the future," he said.

Computer models suggest that about 20% of the oil has probably evaporated, with almost 80% now on the coastline, and around 0.25%, or some 40 tonnes, remaining at sea.

However, satellite images suggest that far larger amounts may remain afloat, with the potential to spread much further a field.

Yahoo News 19 Aug 06
Clean-up crews recover some of massive Lebanon oil spill

BEIRUT (AFP) - Clean-up crews have recovered about 100 tonnes of oil along the coast of a historic Lebanese port city after a massive spill caused by Israel's bombing of a power plant.

The clean up by European and Lebanese teams in Jbeil, north of the capital Beirut, represents just a fraction of the 10,000 to 15,000 tonnes (11,000-16,500 tons) of fuel estimated to have leaked from the Jiyeh plant.

The spill has polluted about 200 kilometres (124 miles) of the Lebanese and Syrian coasts, the EU said Saturday. "Up to now, a total amount of recovered oil is close to about 100 tonnes in Jbeil where the European team and Lebanese civil defence worked together," a European Union (EU) statement said.

Lebanese environmental group Green Line has described the spill as the biggest environmental disaster in the Mediterranean basin, but officials said the scale of the threat is not yet known.

Senior officials from the United Nations, the European Union and regional states meeting in the Greek port city of Piraeus on Thursday unveiled a plan to clean up oil-clogged parts of the Lebanese coastline in an operation expected to cost at least 50 million euros (64 million dollars).

The plan, supervised by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the International Maritime Organisation (IMO), prescribes immediate surveys by helicopter and a joint effort to clean up to 30 coastal sites in Lebanon.

UNEP executive director Achim Steiner said in Piraeus it was a matter of "utter urgency" to establish the size of the oil spill and to coordinate equipment, experts and financial support from donors.

In the meantime, the European team from Denmark and Norway, in cooperation with Lebanon's environment ministry, is identifying further areas where expert assistance is required and the team will attempt to start another clean-up operation in a Beirut port, the EU said.

"The targeted sites were designed by Lebanon and the priority was to de-pollute first harbours and beaches in order to restore economic activities," the EU statement said.

Officials warn that if all the oil from the damaged plant were to seep into the sea, the environmental fallout could rival the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill that devastated Alaska's Prince William Sound.
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