Victoria Yan – The Daily Star
BEIRUT: Activists believe time may be up for the alleged mismanagement of the Costa Brava landfill, as three separate legal actions look to shut the operation down or at least push the site’s managers to allow greater oversight. The lawsuits target the site’s owner and its operator the Council for Development and Reconstruction and Al-Jihad for Commerce and Contracting (JCC), respectively.
In January 2018, Cabinet approved the expansion of the Costa Brava landfill despite warnings several months earlier that the dump was nearly at capacity.
In response, several lawyers for the civil society group United for Lebanon filed a civil lawsuit in April against the CDR and JCC to stop the landfill’s expansion. The suit is currently under the jurisdiction of Judge Rola Chamoun at Aley’s Court of Urgent Matters.
Because the site is almost full, stopping its expansion would ultimately shut it down. But UFL has since come to view this solution as unrealistic, and its goals have further been changed.
“In principle, we want Costa Brava to be shut down. The state of the landfill is obvious to anyone who passes it,” says Rami Ollaik, a UFL lawyer. “However, we also know that given the reality of the situation, garbage would pile up in the streets with nowhere to go.”
The group has therefore proposed the creation of an independent body to supervise all operations, while still allowing the CDR and JCC to remain the owner and the operator, Ollaik told The Daily Star. “The defendants have agreed to cooperate,” he said. But, he added, no final settlement has been reached.
This is not the only instance legal action that has been taken to shut down Costa Brava. Another lawsuit, filed by civil society activists in September 2016, ultimately failed.
This time, however, the UFL lawyers believe that they have a chance to change the way the site is managed, which for them is a positive advancement.
Even if Chamoun does order Costa Brava’s closure, the lawyers said that it would likely be temporary and that no immediate solution is in sight, which is why they are at the very least aiming for greater oversight, regardless of the legal procedure’s outcome.
YEARS OF CONTROVERSY Located on Lebanon’s coastline just south of Beirut’s Rafik Hariri International Airport, Costa Brava opened in April 2016 as a temporary solution to the capital’s trash crisis.
The dump was controversial from the outset. Activists decried its location, highlighting its violation of the Barcelona Convention ratified by Lebanon, which barred the creation of landfills along the Mediterranean. Fishermen in the area protested the site and its management soon after it opened, claiming that their catches were suffering because of contamination from the landfill.
In January 2017, a flock of birds that were attracted to the waste crashed into a plane mid-air at the Beirut airport, leading to the landfill’s temporary closure. To deal with the seagulls, the state ordered hunters to shoot the birds on site and installed ultrasonic machines to repel them from garbage.
Several weeks later, the Costa Brava landfill resumed operations.
More than two years after the landfills opening, Costa Brava still absorbs waste from Lebanon’s most populated areas. A long-term waste-management plan for the country remains non-existent.
FURTHER LEGAL ACTIONIn addition to the April lawsuit against the expansion, UFL filed two additional criminal complaints over the summer seeking retribution for the damage done.
The suits targeted the CDR and JCC, as well as their leaders, Nabil Jisr and Jihad al-Arab.
“We believed it to be more effective to hold the CDR and JCC accountable by suing them in three separate courts,” Ollaik said.
“This way, it is harder for political intervention and corruption to get in the way. Each court is responsible for a separate issue, putting the CDR and Jihad al-Arab under more pressure.” The first criminal complaint, which was sent to Mount Lebanon Public Prosecutor Judge Ghada Aoun, accused the institutions and their heads of damaging the environment surrounding the landfill and generating a public health hazard.
The second, sent to State Financial Prosecutor Ali Ibrahim, accused the companies and their owners of squandering public funds.
A signed settlement to the civil suit would ultimately not affect either of the two criminal cases. Under Aoun and Ibrahim, separate investigations will be launched into the CDR’s and JCC’s finances, as well as the management of the landfill and its environmental impact.
Additionally, the criminal lawsuits will not have an impact on whether Costa Brava will continue operations. Instead, they will seek to hold the owners and operators accountable for damages done if the defendants are found guilty. Accountability could come in the form of a monetary fine, or even imprisonment.
“We look at both of them [Jisr and Arab] as accomplices to the destruction,” Ollaik said.
Mona Kalout, a CDR representative, told The Daily Star that neither the council nor Jisr would comment on the cases because they are still ongoing. JCC and an adviser to Arab did not respond to a request for comment.THEY’RE ‘READY TO SIGN’The legal progress made over the summer was generally positive for UFL, the organization’s lawyers told The Daily Star. According to Ollaik and another UFL lawyer, Cynthia Hamawi, the accumulation of their legal actions have forced the operators to sit at the table and settle.
Referring to the past several hearings, Ollaik said the defendants were unable to produce convincing cases to exonerate themselves, each instead blaming the other for the ongoing mismanagement.
“This looked great for us,” he said, laughing.
By the end of October, UFL had sent a memorandum of understanding detailing its requirements for a settlement to mediators representing the CDR and JCC, which would strip them of absolute supervisory power.
“Everything is on the right track as long as there is no political interference,” Hamawi said.
Over the weekend, Ollaik informed The Daily Star that the defendants were “ready to sign.”
“Some people might criticize us for working with them if this settlement goes through, but we see an opportunity to create a solution to a problem.”
A final hearing under Chamoun’s jurisdiction will take place Wednesday, after which the verdict will be announced.
