Here is a story I bet you won’t read in too many other places today.
Athens garbage collectors have been put on 24 hours shifts in an attempt to clean the streets of the city of 35,000 tons of rubbish which have piled up during a weeklong closure of the city’s only landfill over a sewage disposal dispute.
Shortly thereafter local and regional officials agreed to stop their closure of the Ano Liosia dump, which according to Kathimerini, “was launched last Tuesday in protest at the local disposal of partially processed sludge from the capital's main sewage-treatment plant.” However, those same officials insisted they would still not allow sludge from a plant at Psyttaleia on an islet off Piraeus to be dumped there.
The landfill at Ano Liossia -- the only legal landfill in Attica -- has been closed since last Tuesday, by order of Ano Liossia mayor Nikos Papadimas, backed by the mayors of the other western Attica cities, in protest over a decision announced recently by environment, town planning and public works minister George Souflias for the transfer of sludge from the sewage-water plant on the island of Psytallia to the Ano Liossia landfill for treatment. Souflias has campaigned hard to persuade protesters that a new way of disposing of the sludge - which until now was dumped raw - will solve the problems of the unbearable stench and occasional leakage. But lots of nearby residents ain’t buying it.
Kathimerini reports that the treatment plant already has a serious problem of overflow because more than 150,000 tons of partially treated sludge has accumulated there as a result of earlier disputes.“
Meanwhile, Western Piraeus residents, who complain of an unbearable stench from from the site, and who say “leaks” are not uncommon are planning further protests over the accumulated sludge.
The government acknowledges the complaints but says they have no choice but to dump sludge there until a new plant opens in 2006 at Psyttaleia. Environment and Public Works Minister Giorgos Souflias said yesterday, “I understand and respect the anxiety and the problems of the people of western Attica. But unfortunately, the massive mistake of providing for only one landfill in Attica has already been committed, and there is no other way out.” Deputy Environment Minister Themistocles Xanthopoulos adds, "We hope that in two years, all the sludge will become odorless grains that will not pollute the Attic basin.”
According to the Athens News Agency the Department of Tourism has been most critical about the garbage pile up in Athens. Tourism Minister Dimitris Avramopoulos said the whole mess was damaging the image of Athens and was a risk to public health. He said this was an "unacceptable picture", and severely criticized the fact that Greece was last (in Europe) in waste management systems.
That same sewage plant was ordered recently by an administrative court to discontinue its current practice of dumping sludge in large trenches close to the sea because of the danger of maritime pollution.
You say you don’t much care about this situation.
You would if you lived nearby I bet.
Anyway, the Oread Daily cares…
And, you know what? Had I not looked into this article I would never have discovered that just yesterday another of Athens’s costly surveillance cameras which had been set up as part of last year’s Olympics security plan was destroyed by a roving group of zany anarchists. They set fire to the damn thing just one day after six other ones were destroyed in the same way.
According to Athens police, five hooded youths broke open the camera in Nea Smyrni and set it on fire at 3 a.m. yesterday.
Nearly three hundred such cameras had been installed for the Olympics. Many are still in use although Kathimerini reports last November the country’s privacy watchdog, the Hellenic Data Protection Authority, placed severe restrictions on their use and ruled that they could only be used for monitoring traffic.
Oh yeah, just for the hell of it all 15 youths on motorcycles also smashed the windows of Emporiki and Egnatia banks on Athinas Street in central Athens and threw Molotov cocktails inside, causing substantial damage.
And the beat goes on…Sources: Antara News, Kathimerini, Athens News Agency
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