How many Hinkleys are there in Greece?
Athens News,
By Yannis Zabetakis
izabet@chem.uoa.gr
Scene 1: In Maliakos Gulf, since February, many thousands of fish have died. Experts talk of a total ecological disaster, on par with the Amvrakikos Gulf in February 2008. The fish farms in Maliakos have lost stock worth millions of euros. Who is going to reimburse the companies and local fishermen?
Scene 2: A newly built hotel with an exotic name in Nea Philadelphia is not connected to the main sewage pipeline and so, using the rainwater drains, its waste ends up in the Kifisos River. The odour is typically compelling, especially in the heat. Who respects the neighbourhood? How did this hotel get planning permission with no provision for its waste?
Scene 3: For how long will the people of Thiva, Oinofita, Avlida and Oropos be drinking contaminated water? On April 15, in the EU parliament, the Asopos River became a pan-European case. A representative of Stavros Dimas, the EU’s environment commissioner, publicly acknowledged for the first time that the Asopos case was closed in 2006 but that protests by local people did indeed force the EU Commission to reopen its file in 2007. Furthermore, the commission will soon establish a maximum limit for the chromium VI currently contaminating water in the region.
Two words underlie these three scenes: waste management, two words which mean nothing in Greece today.
Greece still has about 400 illegal landfills, and according to a Greek daily, if nothing is done the EC will soon start fining Greece 10 million euros a day. Despite this the construction of an effective management system for domestic and industrial waste remains far off.
It is thus obvious that in Greece we have more than one potential Hinkley, Calif., where carcinogenic chromium VI killed people and made Erin Brockovich famous for her battle against the energy giant Pacific Gas and Electric Co.
Greek poet Yiorgos Seferis, a Nobel laureate, once wrote that, “Wherever I travel Greece wounds me”. In the case of waste management, his line could perhaps be transformed to read: “Whichever river flows, Hinkley comes to mind”.
Apart from chromium VI, rivers in Greece are contaminated by the illegal dumping of domestic and industrial waste, cocktails of heavy metals, fertilisers and pesticides while the local authorities and prefects remain blind to what is happening.
The non-existence of waste management in Greece has paramount consequences for the environment and the safety of the food that is produced in contaminated areas.
The latest example of the contamination of food is the Maliakos Gulf. The fishing season is over for hundreds of fishermen. Fish farms are already seeking compensation, as the Athens News reported in April.
In parallel, when New Democracy MP Michalis Yannakis asked Antonis Zampelas, chairman of EFET, the Greek food safety authority, to vouch for the safety of the food produced in Thiva and Oinofita, such as potatoes, carrots and onions, Zampelas replied no conclusions may be drawn until further data become available.
In order to assess the food-safety problem that arises from the lack of waste management, there are no magical solutions but certain methodological steps. We need to consult the company registries in each industrial area and conduct immediate onsite audits. Within a few days we can identify the polluters.
Companies that fail to conform to existing laws would need to stop operating immediately, until they apply all relevant environmental and food legislation. These steps are basic, but in Greece we do not want to perform proper audits.
In any organised state, the organisation that performs these audits is not manned by elected officials such as prefects or mayors. Sadly, politicians prefer the solution with the least political cost and not the strict application of the law. This is the reason behind the really low fines, in the past, for the polluters in Asopos, Amvrakikos and Maliakos.
The country’s agricultural production and environment are becoming even more contaminated. How long will it be before tourists notice the polluted beaches, rivers and food? Environmental damage will have a direct detrimental impact on this key economic sector.
There are two fundamental steps that need to be taken. First, a complete retooling of safety audits so they all fall under one ministerial roof. Today water in rivers and lakes is controlled by the environmental auditors of EYEP, under the ministry of environment and public works (YPEXODE) and the Institute of Geological Studies (IGME), under the ministry of development.
When the same water enters a food industry, it is controlled by EFET, under the ministry of agriculture and food. And when the same water is bottled, it is checked by the ministry of health. There are, therefore, four different ministries involved in the safety audits of the most valuable of foods: the water we drink daily.
The result of this is simple and tragic: audits are overly fragmented and ineffective.
Secondly, the judges of this country need to start applying the EU principle of polluter pays. In Italy, Felice Casson, now a member of the Italian senate, became famous because of the high fines that were levied when he was the top prosecutor in the trial of directors from Enichem and Montedison. The case was centred on an environmental disaster and the death of 157 workers due to PVC production in an industrial district of Venice, in 2005. The fines, following the polluter-pays principle, totalled 500 million euros.
In the Asopos region, cancer now kills 38 percent of the people in the town of Oinofita. In Maliakos, all the fish are dead for this year.
And yet with fines of a few thousands euros, polluters will never pay the real cost of their damage. They will just pay the fine and continue to pollute the environment and food chain.
Greece needs its own Felice Casson.
The author is an assistant professor of food chemistry and lead auditor in the chemistry department at the University of Athens. www.zabetakis.net