Oily legacy of war mars Lebanon coast

Operations stopped in February because of harsh weather conditions, she says. April and May were used to assess progress and compile a list of 32 locations that still need cleaning.

Now, the MoE is soliciting grants to resume work. One donor has been secured so far; it's still in the bidding process for contractors.

The pace ofcleanup is "normal," MoE director-general Berj Hatjian said at a press conference last month. "There are major disasters in which the pollution remains for years.... For Lebanon, our 60 to 70 percent completion is pretty good, [especially since] this oil spill started during war."

But environmentalists say the government and contracted companies, at best, have been inefficient.

Most of the oil collected was free-floating; the hard part – pollution stuck to the rocks – remains untouched.

The contracted companies that were assigned most of the work should have accomplished much more with the millions of dollars at their disposal, argues environmentalist Mohamed el-Sarji. The NGO of which he is a member, Bahr Lubnan, was allotted a small section to clean last year.

Left as is, the oil is reentering the sea, says Richard Steiner, a marine conservation scientist at the University of Alaska and consultant on this spill.

"They should have been [cleaning] seven days a week, weather permitting, till it was done," he says, adding that a half-year delay like Lebanon's rarely happens.

Oil on the shore can melt in the summer heat and ooze into the water. Storms can pluck oil from seafloor nooks and crannies and throw it back onto the beach.

Pollution has already resurfaced at important sites like the Palm Islands, Lebanon's flagship marine reserve off the coast of Tripoli. "There's oil all over the place. It looks like it hasn't even been touched," says Professor Steiner, who visited there last month.

A 3,000-sq.-ft. "rubbery mat" of oil drifted ashore this summer at Eddé Sands, a high-end beach resort 22 miles north of Beirut.

Some of the free-floating oil collected last year is still sitting in bags and drums on the beach, soaking in rays like the sunbathers next to them. They're sealed in an environmentally sound way, the MoE says, but activists have documented several broken containers.

Meanwhile, oil or no oil, many fishermen and swimmers are reclaiming their coastline.

Raif Nadir, a retired banker and member of Bahr Lubnan, catches a few pounds every morning in his seaside village of el-Barbara, north Lebanon. Children play in the water near the beige rocks of a small harbor, still stained with last year's oil.

People used to swim and hang out about 100 yards down, Mr. Nadir says. "Now it's very dirty and we have no money to clean up, [so] we look where it is clean and we sit there."

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