BAR ELIAS, LEBANON: by reuters —  At the entrance of a rural town in Lebanon’s Bekaa
valley, a blue sign says “Welcome to Bar Elias, population 50,000” but
in the past six years, that number has more than doubled with Syrians
seeking shelter from the war across the border. “They are our guests,” said Mayor Mawas Araji. “But we don’t have the capacity to serve them as we should.” The
refugee crisis has drained public services in the historically poor
area in Lebanon’s farming heartland, Araji said. Yet perhaps the most
glaring strain has been the garbage mountain rising among the hills, or
the open water canals overflowing with trash in the winter. With the
influx of people, Bar Elias now handles 40 extra tons of refuse every
day, in a country that already had no national waste disposal plan. Since
the Syrian conflict began in 2011, at least 1.5 million people have
poured into Lebanon — around a quarter of the country’s population —
where most languish in severe poverty.

Makeshift settlements have
popped up all around the country as the Lebanese government has long
rejected setting up refugee camps. To stem the flow of Syrians making
the perilous journey to Europe by boat, the EU has funneled billions
into Syria’s neighboring countries, giving Lebanon €147 million ($157 )
between 2014 and 2016. For government officials, the need for foreign
funding is clear in cases like Bar Elias, where aid groups have warned
of dire environmental hazards. The EU funded a €4.5 million ($4.8
million) waste management facility set to open next month in the town,
around 12 km from the Syrian border. The massive hangar will process
150 tons of waste daily from Bar Elias and two nearby towns, creating
several jobs, Araji said. “For us, this was a dream.” Nestled between
the fields of Bar Elias, Hassan Ibrahim, 62, lives amid hundreds of
cramped tents pitched haphazardly in the mud. “We’ve appointed
someone here to collect the garbage … so when the municipality comes,
everything is ready,” said Ibrahim, who escaped shelling in Aleppo five
years ago. But in another makeshift camp a few streets away, Maamar
Al-Alawi seems less cheerful. Across from her tent, a large cesspit is
brimming with sewage water and rubbish.

During heavy rainfall, the gutters also spill over with floating plastic bags. “It’s
all garbage on top of garbage,” said Al-Alawi, who cleans around her
family’s spot every day in vain. “You go into the tent, and it stinks.” As
well as the dangers of open dump sites and burning waste, trash also
often fills irrigation canals that feed nearby vegetable fields,
according to the EU-funded agency that designed the Bar Elias facility. Lebanon
has been plagued by a waste disposal crisis, regardless of refugees,
with politicians repeatedly failing to agree a solution, sparking
several mass protests in recent years.

On a recent visit to the
Bekaa, European Commissioner Johannes Hahn said the EU was “trying to do
our best to resolve the Syrian crisis.” “But I’m a realistic man,” he added. “And I have to do first things first” by helping fill Lebanon’s shortages. The
new Bar Elias facility represents a prototype that should become part
of broader national plans for development, said Ziad El-Sayegh, senior
national policy adviser for Lebanon’s Ministry of the Displaced.
Ministries
had been putting together a “master plan for all the infrastructure”
but could not undertake it without outside support, he said. “The government has an enormous deficit, and then on top of that, add the weight of the refugee crisis,” El-Sayegh said. Lebanese
officials will take their vision for such a plan to Brussels next week,
highlighting how the refugee crisis has strained Lebanon’s already
crumbling infrastructure.
Prime Minister Saad Al-Hariri, who has been
trying to drag Lebanon out of institutional paralysis since he was
appointed in November, said the plan would “equally benefit Lebanese
citizens and displaced Syrians.”