Flights in and out of Lebanon’s Beirut
airport are at risk because of the large number of birds flying over a
nearby garbage dump, the country’s transport minister said Wednesday. “Today
we face an emergency… we recognise that there is a danger posed to
civil aviation movement by the birds,” Yusef Fenianos said after a
meeting with Prime Minister Saad Hariri. “The
presence of the Costa Brava dump has contributed to the increasing
number of birds,” the minister said, according to a statement released
by Hariri’s office after the meeting.

The Costa
Brava dump was created in March 2016, as one of three “temporary” dumps
intended to provide an interim solution to the closure of the main
landfill receiving waste from Beirut. Under
a government plan intended to end the crisis caused by the landfill’s
closure, the dumps were eventually intended to have waste processing
facilities, but that has not happened. As
a result, garbage has piled up in Costa Brava, on the coastline close
to the runways at Beirut’s international airport, reaching nine metres
in some places and wafting foul odours nearby.

Environmentalists
have for months warned that the dump is attracting rodents and
increasing numbers of birds, posing potential risk for aviation.

In August, the Lebanese pilots’ union warned of the possibility of the birds being sucked into airplane engines.

“Thank
God, up until now, the flights have not encountered any real danger,”
said Fenianos, who is also minister of public works.

He
said the problem was being tackled by an increase in the number of
devices installed around the airport emitting bird of prey calls in
order to scare away the nuisance birds.

But
the activist movement “You Stink”, launched to protest government
inaction during the height of the garbage crisis, mocked the measures.

“What
are you waiting for to close Costa Brava… for a plane to crash or an
international decision to shut the airport,” they wrote on Facebook.

“The solution is not to scare the birds away,” they said, urging the dump be closed.

Local
media reported that on Tuesday a plane belonging to national carrier
Middle East Airlines encountered a large flock of birds as it landed on
the airport’s west runway, prompting concern.

A
permanent solution for the waste produced by Beirut and its
surroundings has yet to be found, months after the Naameh landfill was
shuttered and garbage began piling up on the capital’s streets.

The
issue is one of many outstanding challenges that remain to be resolved
by Lebanon’s new government, formed on December 18 after some two years
of political paralysis.