Posted on 08/18/2006 2:08:47 PM PDT by raygun
PIRAEUS, Greece, Aug 17, 2006 (AFP) - International experts on Thursday 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.
Israel was not represented at the meeting, but is in close contact with UNEP on the issue, Steiner added.
I agree with you.
What it takes is to inflict sufficient pain to bring them to their knees, cry "Uncle!" and throw down their swords and bend them into plowshares.
You won't see it reported in the MSM, but I'll bet the people are looking and thinking, "This is victory?!?!? We can't afford too many more victories like this, as we might end up losing more than merely winning a war."
Allowing the hezzbos a foothold should be costly. Maybe costly enough that they demand their govt. actually do something about them. But, they won't. It'll be alot more costly, I fear.
I would not be suprised if somebody in the hullabazo decided to take a wrench to the the old pipes and give them a twist to make Isreal look like they were not only bombing "innocent" civilians as well as creating an environmental disaster
..............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................
Hey! Dimwits!
This is refined fuel oil that will flash off into the atmosphere over a short period of time,
not crude oil that will form globules and sink to the bottom.
Give nature a few weeks!
I'm not sure I understand your point. Are you saying that it was smart to cause some pain for non-Shiite Lebenesem, short of bombing civilian areas?
PS - "During the 1991 Gulf War, Saddam's troops set 600 Kuwaiti oil wells ablaze "creating a toxic smoke that choked the atmosphere and blocked the sun," according to news reports. The smoke was so thick for a time that the temperature in Kuwait was 10 degrees below normal.
Yes, it was terrible and as far as I remember the world condmened Saddam for it. What's your point?
Iraqi troops dumped an estimated 50 million barrels of oil into the Kuwaiti desert, forming huge oil lakes and contaminating aquifers.
Yeah, that was bad. What's your point? That this spill isn't as bad? Okay. Maybe. So what? It's still bad.
Another 4 million barrels of oil were dumped into the Persian Gulf -- an act of eco-sabotage some 25 times larger than the accidental Exxon Valdez oil spill off the coast of Alaska." http://www.cato.org/dailys/04-02-03.html
So are you accusing the Lebenese of causing this spill? What's your evidence?
You're an economist; aren't you curious why no one went as nuts about the environment with Saddam vs this screeching about da joos?
Saddam was condemend too. The difference is, of course, Saddam was a brutal tyrant and thug who doesn't give a wit about anything but himself. Hence condeming him isn't going to do much good. The only thing he understands is force.
Israel, on the other hand, is a civilized democratic society whose populace does care about environmental disasters. This spill is going to affect Northern Israeli beaches too, you know. Hence these kinds of reports are much more likely to effect policy change in Israel.
I would not be surprised if you were right. This was a PR war ultimately.
What it takes is to inflict sufficient pain to bring them to their knees, cry "Uncle!" and throw down their swords and bend them into plowshares.
Damn straight, ray! And I think the 'sufficient-pain' thrashold[sic] is close.
I'm still wondering what's in store on Aug 22, and if we still have the will to pre-empt their sordid plans.
Well see. Stay well and well-armed................FRegards
In the course of the conflict in the Middle East, the oil-fuelled power plant of Jieh, located directly on the coastline approximately 30 km south of Beirut was hit by bombs on July 13 and 15, 2006. Part of the storage tanks caught fire and were burning for several days. A large part of the fuel was spilled into the Mediterranean Sea as a result of the blast. The Lebanese ministry of environment estimated that approximately 30,000 tons of heavy fuel oil were emmitted into the sea.
Due to south-westerly winds and the sea currents, the oil spill was partly carried out to sea and partly dispersed along the coast of Lebanon. Until the beginning of August, 2006 the Lebanese coastline has been affected from the Damour region south of Beirut to the Syrian border in the North.
Following a request for help from the Lebanese Ministry of Environment, the EC Monitoring and Information Centre (MIC) of DG Environment triggered the International Charter 'Space and Major Disasters' in order to obtain information about the extent of the oil pollution in the coastal strip and, where possible, the size of the pollution.
The Center for Satellite Based Crisis Information (ZKI) of DLR took over the project management in this activation and is producing satellite analyses in the context of the European GMES Service Elements Risk-EOS and MarCoast.
Click the satellite image below to be linked to 2139x3117 (WxH) DinA1 printing optimized map (the image below is merely 523x763 (WxH):
Bunker fuel or not, its nasty stuff. Lets pour a barrel of bunker fuel into your pool, or 3 or 4 spread out over your front and back yards, and we'll see about all that "give nature a few weeks and it'll flash off".
In the summer of 2006, military conflict between Lebanon and Israel led to an oil spill along the coast of Lebanon. Between July 13 and 15, 2006, damage to the Jiyyeh Power Station released thousands of tons of oil along the coast of Lebanon. According to BBC news, early estimates indicated that the oil spill could rival the Exxon Valdez accident in 1989. Covering roughly 120 kilometers (75 miles), the spill was expected to affect fishing and tourism industries, as well as local wildlife. Because cleanup efforts could not safely begin until the hostilities ended, the oil slick continued to spread in the Mediterranean Sea in early August 2006. Representatives from the United Nations, the European Union, and the International Maritime Organization planned to discuss the issue in Greece on August 17, 2006.
The Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) on NASA’s Terra satellite took this picture of the region on August 10, 2006. In this image, the oil slick appears as a slightly darker shade of blue on the ocean surface, and it is easier to see in the enlarged area around Beirut at lower right. The slick spreads from the power plant at the southern end of the image to well north of the city of Beirut. The oil initially moved away from the coast, but some officials feared that it might return to the shoreline. The intensely urbanized area of Beirut appears in shades of gray, with straight lines and sharp angles marking the city’s features. In contrast, patches of green appear along Lebanon’s rough terrain to the east.
Oil slicks are not always easily visible in satellite imagery from passive sensors like radiometers, which observe reflected sunlight. The ocean is already a dark surface in the imagery from those sensors, and the oil may only change the color slightly if at all. More often, oil slicks are observed with active sensors like radars, which send out pulses of energy and measure the returned signal. However, at the time of this image, the area of the slick was in a part of the ASTER scene where the ocean surface appeared very bright. Generally, the rougher the water surface, the brighter the ocean will appear, and because oil smoothes the water’s surface, places where the oil has spread appear darker in this image.
NASA image created by Jesse Allen, Earth Observatory, using data provided courtesy of the NASA/GSFC/MITI/ERSDAC/JAROS, and U.S./Japan
Lebanese Army = Hizballah with uniforms..
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