Four weeks after the Israel-Hizbullah ceasefire, Lebanon’s environmental wounds are still bleeding. On July 14, Israeli warplanes hit the Jieh power plant, some 12 miles south of Beirut, to hamper operations by the guerrilla movement that had captured two Jewish soldiers in a cross-border raid three days earlier. The first missile hit before dawn, setting one of the enormous holding tanks ablaze, but the fire was contained until a second missile, then a third, slammed into the compound. The depot exploded; the fire burned hot enough to contort the tanks into Dali-esque metal carcasses and the train tracks into cooked spaghetti.
Thick sooty smoke billowed up out of and around the four-story high containers for four windy days while a river of unburned oil poured through a broken wall, across the train tracks and into the Mediterranean Sea, to ride the currents north to Beirut. No one knows exactly how much of the oil burned off, but an estimated 110,000 barrels spilled into the Mediterranean, spreading the slick almost 100 miles along the coast and up to Syria’s shoreline.
The spill has been described as Lebanon’s worst-ever environmental disaster, and experts say it could take a year to clean up. Lebanese Environment Minister Yacoub Sarraf estimated the cleanup cost at $100 million, adding that the total cost of the bombing to the tourist and fishing industries were still unknown. Overall, the Lebanon Council for Development and Reconstruction puts the direct costs of war damage to infrastructure at $3.6 billion, although some estimates are triple that. “It will take us several years to recover,” Finance Minister Jihad Azour told a news conference earlier this week to announce the signing of a $45 million soft-loan deal with the Arab Trade Finance Program. The loan agreement will help cover costs of buying and importing fuel oil for Électricité Du Liban, the state power company that owns the Jieh plant.
Amid the devastation at the power plant where the environmental disaster began, the gnarled metal and toxic ash form an apocalyptic landscape in blacks, grays and whites. Skeletal black tree branches dot the outskirts of the compound. A flaky crust crunches underfoot. The contorted metal looks more like a grandiose series of modern sculptures than a key component of Lebanese infrastructure—or like anything that will be repaired soon.
A distant part of the plant continues to supply some electricity, but the oil and water tanks remain unusable. Meaningful cleanup at the plant hasn’t even begun, with nascent reconstruction efforts around the country focused on rebuilding bridges and getting hundreds of thousands of displaced people settled. Amid billions of dollars in reconstruction pledges from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar and the West—as well as Hizbullah promises to spend billions more rebuilding housing—the Lebanese government is also preparing legal action to sue the Israeli government for damages.
But long-term lawsuits and promises of pledges bring little immediate comfort to those whose livelihood depends on the plant and the sea. “I live off this place,” says an elderly watchman who recounts his return to his post at the plant 10 days after the flames died, after the metal oil tanks and rail tanker cars re-solidified, but while they continued to smolder. “I was going to cry. It looked like hell,” he says, tears gathering in his eyes. “This puts food on my table. I have worked here for 22 years. What am I going to do?” Up and down the coast, others are asking the same questions.
