In addition to the landfill crisis on Beirut’s streets–covered on this blog yesterday— there appears to be a heavy dose of nasty brown stuff spewing into the Mediterranean near Beirut Airport, as seen in these pictures I took a couple of days ago.
You can see the runway at the top right. And the output point appears to be near a sea resort near Khalde, a few hundred meters before the Ouzai tunnel running underneath the tarmac.
Zooming in on the same area in Google Maps, the brown substance appears to come from very close to this resort, near a green area, before being flushed out to sea via a short canal:
Zoom out and you can see the extent of the damage across the coastline:
But these satellite images could be quite dated– in some parts of Beirut I have noticed Google earth images to be 2-3 years old. Judging by my current airplane window shots, could this mean that the slime has been pumped out constantly for 3 years or even much longer? No wonder Sidon and Khalde are not safe places to swim.
4 comments
It’s a nasty sewage dump- mainly flowing from southern Beirut, Khaldeh and the suburbs like Aramoun/Bchamoun/Choueifat…etc Noticed most of your recent posts have to do with that short trip you took to Jordan- best way to learn about Lebanon is to leave it for a few days every couple of weeks- refreshes your perspective 😉
Interesting, do you have more info on it? Is it sewage?
“Once a beautiful stream flowing amidst fields and pine groves, Ghadir river has become lined with farms and factories in the last decades, as the Choueifat plain was taken over by the growing Southern industrial area of Beirut. It is now among the most polluted rivers in Lebanon, an open-air sewer discharging domestic and industrial waste water and fertilizer runoff into the Mediterranean. As such, the sea bears a characteristic brown discoloration around its outlet.”
Thanks Michael! Source?