Critics call for 'proper
law' to regulate sector
The
Lebanese state could have generated around $2.5 billion, had it collected fees
and taxes from the quarries sector over the past 15 years, according to the
Lebanese Environment Party on Wednesday. The party announced this figure, which
was calculated based on earlier official studies and legal documents, at their
first national conference on the need for organizing quarries, titled "when
will wasting natural resources and public wealth be stopped?"
The
aim of the conference, attended by representatives from various ministries,
municipalities and environmental associations, was to discuss the problems of
the quarries sector today and come up with recommendations to the government.
The
highly politicized quarries sector had been and continues to be an important
financial source for political parties and groups, said Habib Maalouf, a prominent member of the party founded by a group
of environmentalists and officially registered a year ago.
Last
year, a scandal erupted when it was disclosed that the Lebanese judiciary had
ordered the payment of almost $250 million to members of MP Nicholas Fattoush's family, in compensation for a government decision
to close down their quarries.
This
example, showing that huge profits were made by quarry owners in the absence of
substantial taxes collected from the sector, largely explained why numerous
attempts to organize this sector were always hampered by politicians, he said.
"There
is an urgent need for a proper law to organize the quarries sector because of
its financial and environmental significance to
A
1996 national plan to organize quarries specifying technical and environmental
standards identified quarry locations and determined the country's needs for
stone. The government remained, however, reluctant to implement this plan due
to of political bickering over this file.
The
party urged the government to organize quarries by adopting an exhaustive
sustainable development plan, taking into consideration factors such as the
protection of
The party also recommended importing sand
instead of extracting it from national forests, and urged the state to stop
exploiting publicly owned land as sites for quarries to minimize their effect
on the environment.
Displaying
photos illustrating the consequences of quarries on people and nature, Maalouf said: "Uncontrolled quarry operations in the
past years caused irreparable damage."
Quarries
had severe impacts, according to the Environment Party, on land, biological
diversity, buildings, road networks, aquifers as well as water and air quality.
"More
than 3,000 hectares of land are mutilated today because of the catastrophic
management of quarries located in over a thousand sites," Maalouf said, adding most of these sites are not licensed.
Only
recently, the Environment Ministry started a project to rehabilitate quarry
sites.
But
the project has yet to identify how quarries will be rehabilitated or who will
pay for their rehabilitation, said the Environment Party.
The
costs of damage caused by quarries yearly reach about LL25 billion, showed a
study on the cost of environmental damage in
According
to the party, the government should implement the "polluters pay"
principle in order to rehabilitate quarries.
Two
months ago, the Interior Ministry issued a decree that put an end to grace periods
granted for years by the ministry to quarries, supposedly for removing stocks. Highly criticized by environmentalists, these grace
periods were viewed as a veiled way for quarries to continue their work
unchecked.
According
to the decree, the Higher Council for Quarries, headed by the Environment
Ministry, will be the only authority in charge of managing and giving licenses
to quarries.
Source
Daily Star
By Raed
El Rafei
Monday, May 01, 2006