Australian firm to start cleanup of Beirut beach – for free

 

An Australian firm with local ties will begin on January 10 cleaning the hundreds of tons of sand contaminated by oil on Beirut”s Ramlet al-Baida beach, after the company agreed to the Environment Ministry”s conditions on Friday, a company official said.

 

Recoverit International will need until February 10 to filter all the oil from the sand, which will then be returned to the beach, said Georges Farah, Recoverit”s director and part-owner.

 

Environmental non-governmental organizations (NGO) have long warned of the hazard posed by the drums and bags of oily sand, which was collected after the oil spill caused by Israeli warplanes bombing the Jiyyeh power plant at the beginning of the 2006 summer war.

 

Bahr Loubnan, an NGO supported by the family of slain former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, gathered most of the detritus stored on Ramlet al-Baida, and a Bahr Loubnan leader welcomed the news of the waste”s imminent removal.

 

“Basically, I think it”s a good idea,” said Mohammad Sarji, who supervised most of Bahr Loubnan”s clean-up efforts. “Recoverit is a company that”s trying to do something good. We should give them a chance.

 

“Historically speaking, Lebanese have raped and pillaged our beaches and taken the sand from them. Whatever droplet of sand we can keep on the beaches is good for Lebanon.”

 

Recoverit will not receive any money from the ministry, and Farah estimated that the project will cost about $300,000.

 

The company would clean the sand by mixing the contaminated material with a white granular product, also known as recoverit, Farah said. The polluted waste will be liquefied by mixing it with diesel oil, and then combined with an amount of recoverit equaling 10 percent of the weight of the mixture, he added.

 

The oil and fat from the sand cling to the recoverit granules, and then the resulting compound is boiled, after which the recoverit and oil can be skimmed from the top while the sand falls to the bottom of the water.
 

The recoverit product costs about $65,000 per ton, and the Farah”s firm will spend about $100,000 for the recoverit necessary for 450-500 tons of waste at Ramlet al-Baida, Farah said.

 

The remaining $200,000 of the project”s cost will cover operating expenses, and Farah said he believed he could find local sponsors to defray the cost, he said.

 

“I am confident that we can have local sponsors,” Farah told The Daily Star on Friday.

 

After competing Ramlet al-Baida, Farah said he and partner Rami Ayoub also would like to clean the contaminated sand at beaches in Tripoli, Jbeil and Jiyyeh. Farah estimated that in Jbeil alone at least 1,800 tons of polluted sand remained.

 

Recoverit has also invited prospective clients from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Dubai to observe the cleaning process at Ramlet al-Baida, as Gulf countries offer many lucrative decontamination projects, he added.

 

“We”re doing this to prove that this is a system which works,” Farah said. “The big decontamination business is there and not here.”

 

The ministry has required that Recoverit”s work be tested, and the Industrial Research Institute will make 10 visits and take 70 samples during Recoverit”s month of work, said a letter from the institute.

 

In three previous rounds of testing of sand cleaned by Recoverit, the institute found that the sand was 99.4 percent-99.6 percent free of oil, Farah said.

 

The Environment Ministry has also mandated that Recoverit haul the pollutants to the Zahrani power plant in the South, although the ministry has not announced how it eventually dispose of the contaminants.

 

“Definitely we need to know exactly what the disposal method is,” said Wael Hmaidan, executive director of NGO IndyAct. “It”s very important to remove the oil residue that has been collected as soon as possible.”