The Lebanese litani river‏ In a press conference at the chamber of commerce, industry and agriculture in Bekaa Valley, Lebanon, a non-governmental environment initiative under the slogan “Together to Save the Litani Stream” has announced the start of its programme Saturday through four interactive projects aimed at solving home, industrial and agricultural waste problems that harm the Litani River.
During the conference, the project coordinators announced their plan on how to carry out their activities and achieve their goals. The project is meant to call the attention to the health and environmental problems caused by neglecting the Litani River which affect the Lebanese society as a whole.
In a statement, they explained their “Litani road”, a reference to a bus that would move between villages from the source of the Litani River to its mouth that displays on its sides images of the daily reality of the river. The bus would primarily spread awareness; carrying a team of environment experts, specialists, and activists, who will travel the villages on a weekly basis to hold seminars and entertainment activities (like children’s theatre) on raising awareness about the Litani’s waterflow.
The second project, dedicated to solving the industrial waste issue, also includes a number of activities like workshops for industrial workers and lab owners who dump their waste in the river. The activities will also cover special meetings with the managers of factories lying around the Litani basin and a photography exhibition showing the grave outcome of industrial waste dumps, like health problems especially cancer.
They added: “If any Lebanese person thinks they are not affected by the Litani waters and their contamination, they must know that most of the vegetables and fruits grown in Lebanon are irrigated from Litani or one of its tributaries. Hence, the third project was \'Our Greenery is Polluted with our Waters\', a documentary film focussing on the sources and reasons of agricultural pollution, especially those caused by the agricultural process itself. The uniqueness of this film comes from the interaction with farmers, with the goal of reaching actual solutions for this escalating problem day by day.\"
The last project is called “Colour Sorting” and it is a strategy to dispose of household waste in a safe way, where the waste would be sorted and recycled in one of the Bekaa regions.
They further mentioned that the announced activities will depend on individual efforts by activists in the “Together to Save the Litani” initiative. Members come from different specialisations, all employed to serve the prime mission of saving the Litani.
Environment activist Marwan Chahine stressed the need for awareness of the problems surrounding the key river and the importance of solving them. He said: \"We have become so used to the contamination in our Litani that we no longer realise the pressing need to move to stop [the contamination] and solve it.”