BEIRUT: Demonstrators blocked roads in the Chouf, Akkar and the Bekaa Valley Thursday to derail key components of a Cabinet plan aimed at defusing the ruinous trash crisis.

While residents and local officials angrily denounced proposals to distribute trash from Beirut and Mount Lebanon to dumps in Akkar and the eastern Bekaa, the Naameh landfill, and the Sidon waste treatment plant, Agriculture Minister Akram Chehayeb defended the plan as a solution to remove trash from the Lebanese ecosystems before the winter rains begin.

“This is a solution for all areas, but it requires the cooperation of all areas” Chehayeb told The Daily Star. “I don’t understand the objections. It is as though people do not want a solution.”

The loudest objections could be heard near Naameh, where residents who struggled for years to close the overused landfill there revolted against the proposal to reopen it for seven days to clear the trash that has accumulated around Beirut and Mount Lebanon.

The landfill, which had been designated to receive 2 million tons of trash over six-year period, instead took in over 15 million tons and remained open for 17 years. The government finally retired it on July 17 this year, but disastrously failed to appoint a trash management plan for the day after, allowing rubbish to foul streets and contaminate rivers and forests.

“The solid waste that has been left out is so fermented,” Chehayeb said, that “you have to put it in a landfill, not just dump it anywhere. And there is no landfill except for a bit of space in Naameh.”

Sanitary landfills are engineered to keep poisonous runoff and explosive gases from leaking into the environment, and in Lebanon there are only two, in Naameh and in Zahle.

The Naameh landfill is not perfect – its operators dump its runoff in the Mediterranean – but environmental experts say it is still better than a regular dump, of which Lebanon has plenty.

But Chouf residents are out of patience. Demonstrators at the landfill’s entrance Thursday afternoon vowed not to let a single truck pass, saying their resistance was a matter of dignity. Activists affiliated with the sizable” You Stink” campaign joined the protest.The mayor of Naameh announced that residents would refuse to reopen the landfill “even for one hour.”

Residents of the neglected Akkar and eastern Bekaa areas also revolted against the Cabinet plan Thursday, despite official assurances that the dumps there would be engineered into sanitary landfills. The Cabinet agreed Wednesday to allocate $100 million to the eastern Bekaa for development, and it passed a decree in August to allocate $300 million to Akkar over three years.

But youth in north Lebanon Thursday formed a group to “guard” their district against dump trucks that attempt to bring in garbage from other areas of the country.

The move was announced during a protest at the main square of the town of Abdeh, where dozens shouted “Akkar is not a dump,” the slogan of a recent campaign against the plan to move garbage to a proposed landfill in the village of Srar.

“The trucks will only enter over our dead bodies,” one protester told reporters. “We have so far been peaceful,” she shouted. “Do not test the non-peaceful among us.”

In the eastern Bekaa, demonstrators closed the road leading from Chtaura to Masnaa, where the remaining landfill is expected to be located.

In Sidon, Mayor Mohammad Saudi said the city would require a new landfill before accepting to receive trash from elsewhere.

Environmentalists and engineers said Thursday it was time for the country to begin separating its organic rubbish, such as food, from the rest of the materials, as the first step for sustainable waste management.

“You should obligate the municipalities to give you just the organic waste,” said Paul Abi Rashid, the head of a coalition of Lebanese environmentalists. “Then you continue to sort in Amrousieh, and then you take all the organics to the Bekaa and convert them to fertilizer.”

Amrousieh is one of Mount Lebanon’s two waste treatment plants. The other is in Karantina. Both used to be operated by Sukleen, the region’s previous waste contractor.

Chehayeb announced Wednesday that the company’s contracts to operate the plants, both owned by the state, would not be renewed.

“We were paying $50 million for a wasteful operation,” he said to The Daily Star, adding that the facilities were only able to compost 3 percent of the trash they processed, under the Sukleen’s management. Lebanon has the potential to compost over half of its trash, according to engineers.

Ziad Abichaker, the head of the Cedar Environmental engineering firm, said a plan similar to Abi Rashid’s could take three to six months to implement, including the time to construct five material recovery facilities, to improve the sorting process.

Chehayeb pushed back at civil society concerns, saying the Cabinet plan embraced sorting.

“We said at the very beginning, this plan requires sorting at the source,” he said. “We incorporated the suggestions of the environmentalists.”

He added that trash could be sorted at the sites of the dumps-turned-landfills, for the first 18 months, until sorting at homes, business and restaurants was adopted more widely.

According to Abichaker, there is an alternative to landfilling the rotting trash already on the streets which has been tried in other countries.

“You take all this waste to a storage site, and you fill them into membranes, and you weld the membrane and you keep them in pockets,” he said. “After 12 months, you come back, you break them open, and all the organic material will have dried out. Then it becomes mechanically possible to sort the waste. And it won’t cause any harm.” “It’s a long shot, and it’s a bit costly,” he admitted,“but it is a technical way to do this.”