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Cleaning up the Lebanese Oil Spill

10/Sep/2006: An oil spill near Beirut caused by an Israeli air strike on a Lebanese power plant has begun settling down in the sea floor of the Mediterranean, killing scores of fish and posing a great threat to marine life in this region. A video released by Greenpeace in late August, shows the oil slick in the sea bed moving slowly towards a sea urchin rooted in sand.

This footage is evidence to the environmental destruction caused by the month long war in Lebanon, with the U.N estimating the cost of the clean up of this spill to be around $ 64 million and could take up to a year to clean up the mess created by the spill.

After Israeli warplanes struck a coastal power plant near Beirut on 14th of July 2006, an estimated 110, 000 barrels of generator oil spilled in to the Mediterranean as the dike meant to prevent oil spills in to the sea was flattened by exploding oil tanks. Initially the oil covered the 85 miles of Lebanon’s coastline reaching Syria and prevented the sunlight from penetrating in to the water, killing the phytoplankton that forms the base of the food chain. Now it has started to sink in to the sea floor, endangering the plant and fish that inhabit the sea bed.

Israeli blockades in this region hampered the clean up operations, which allowed the oil the seep deeper in to the sea floor. Professor Rick Steiner from the University of Alaska, an oil spill expert with a plenty of experience in oil spill cleanup operations is in Lebanon to help the authorities in cleaning up the Mediterranean. Professor Steiner said that the Mediterranean currents have pushed the oil slick northwards towards Syria and cleaning up a slick caused by the denser generator oil would prove to be a challenge in the days to come.

Kesavan Siva

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