Lebanon spill

Towards the end of July, in the course of its bombing campaign against Lebanon, Israel wound up taking out a number of oil storage tanks in Jiyyeh, sending thousands of barrels of crude spilling into the Mediterranean. This act compounded a great deal of environmental destruction wrought by Israel in previous weeks.

At the time, the spill was labeled as the worst in Lebanese history, but the ramifications, we now learn, extend far beyond even that label. The UN Environment Programme sent a team to evaluate the effects of the spill, and their preliminary observations are sobering:

UNEP said the quantity of oil spilled in Lebanon is already comparable to the disaster caused in 1999 off the coast of France when the Erika tanker spilled an estimated 13,000 metric tonnes of oil into the Atlantic Ocean. The agency warned that 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. “We are dealing with a very serious incident and any practical steps are still constrained by the continuation of hostilities. We are glad that two of our experts will now be able to provide advice from Damascus, even though much more is needed,” said Mr. Steiner.

Over 140 kilometres of coastline have been affected by the spill. Cleanup efforts, thus far, have been impossible due to the ongoing attacks by the Israelis. The Lebanese environmental minister claims that it will take a decade to recover from the spill, with potentially huge consequences for Lebanon's tourist industry, which is so dependent on its attractive beachfront. In short, chalk up another outrage from this conflict.