Waste disposal dispute turns ugly in Greece

A four-month battle over waste disposal in Athens turned ugly this week with a firebomb assault on a police commander's home and renewed violence over a disputed landfill project near the capital. Battle lines were literally drawn near the rural town of Keratea where residents opposing the waste disposal project dug a trench on a highway that has seen countless clashes with riot police since December. "It is a form of guerrilla warfare where residents feel their honour is at stake," a riot policeman stationed in the area told Ta Nea daily on Saturday. "Sometimes our opponents even include police officers who live in the area," he added. "Their property is at stake, so they try to protect it." Early on Friday morning, the home of a local police station commander was attacked with firebombs that destroyed three cars parked outside. That same night, Keratea residents carved a 1.5-metre (four-foot) trench across the highway that has been the main battle zone of the protest. The highway to Lavrio, a port servicing several Aegean islands, is already severed with roadblocks patrolled by locals who routinely fight riot police in the surrounding fields, pelting them with rocks and Molotov cocktails. Over 200 police are stationed in the area on a daily basis in an operation that has cost the state more than a million euros ($1.45 million), Ta Nea said. The affair has been a long-running embarrassment for the government which has been criticised by the opposition for its failure to enforce the law. The Keratea residents are refusing to back down despite a series of court rulings against their cause. They argue that the landfill, which was earmarked nearly a decade ago, will irreversibly degrade the local environment in an area that has suffered enough from decades of mining activity and the operation of an oil-fired electricity plant near Lavrio. The government counters that the landfill will replace illegal garbage dumps in the area that already constitute a risk to the environment. For decades, garbage all over Greece was dumped in a wholesale manner in ravines and other available areas, earning the country large fines from the European Commission for serious environmental abuse. The Keratea dispute also risks opening a front with the municipality of Fyli west of Athens where the capital's main garbage dump is situated. The local mayor says the dump will soon be saturated without new facilities elsewhere. "The Fyli site has a life of up to 2.5 years ... it cannot facilitate the entire greater Athens area," mayor Dimitris Bouraimis said in a letter to Prime Minister George Papandreou. "We have paid our debt for many years ... if the government does not act ... the tolerance of residents here will come to an end," he warned. EU Environment Commissioner Janez Potocnik last week praised Greece for its efforts to shut down hundreds of illegal landfills while noting that the country was still lagging in the area of waste management. "They are doing a serious job and if they continue in that way, then I do believe that there will be no need to go to the court for a second time," he noted. He said Athens in December put forward an "ambitious action plan" to close all illegal landfills by the end of June, and to rehabilitate all the closed ones by the middle of next year. "They are reporting to us on a monthly basis," Potocnik said. "Waste management is the main problem."