ABOUT 300 residents from the Larnaca village of Lymbia staged a strike outside Parliament yesterday morning protesting government plans to open a waste disposal plant several kilometres from their village in nearby Koshi.
While the community leader relayed the community’s concerns at a House Environment Committee meeting, the residents waited outside holding large banners reading “Don’t destroy the border community of Lympia” and handing out brochures explaining their opposition to the plant.
Member of the Lymbia Community Council Kostas Saouros told the Cyprus Mail that the Famagusta district’s waste would be brought to the factory, which he said was projected to cover 200 donums of land and would lie 2.5 kilometres from the outermost Lymbia homes.
Although the roughly 3,000 Lymbia residents cite health concerns as the main reason for their opposition, they also point to the unsuitability of nearby Koshi as a location for the plant.
“Lymbia is a border community,” Saouros said. “We are closed off on one side by the Green line and on the other by the Nicosia-Larnaca highway. So we are already limited in our opportunities to expand.”
Saouros said that the plant would not only lower the value of the property in the region and dissuade people from either moving to or staying in the region, but also eliminate one of the few remaining areas on which it would be feasible to build a home.
“There is also a river that runs through the proposed site,” Saouros said. “The European Union does not permit factories to be built in such places.”
Government officials defended their decision before an unsympathetic House Environment Committee, arguing that a thorough scientific feasibility study had confirmed the suitability of the site.
But community leader Michalakis Christodoulou told Parliament that the government had not consulted with the community or its representatives.
Christodoulou said that when the Lymbia residents requested to move the proposed site by two to three kilometres, the government told them that the deadline to begin construction had passed and that the government risked losing EU funding for the plant.
The community leader also said plans were underway to create pigsties and slaughterhouses in the vicinity, as well as a central incinerator – to be used for the disposal of toxic waste generated from state hospitals, private clinics, veterinarians, airports and seaports – that would have dangerous environmental repercussions on the community.
The government had initially planned to build the waste disposal plant near the town of Athienou but scrapped the plans after residents protested.
House Environment Committee member Nicos Tornaritis questioned the planning officials’ assertion that the new site had been selected for its viability.
“What’s the difference between the last location and this one here in Lymbia? Our information is that the difference is the pressure [brought] upon the government and nothing else.”
Another committee member, Roula Mavronikola, asked why there had been no debate over whether the government should construct a plant in an area that was predominantly Turkish Cypriot – the village of Koshi.
“Because it’s a Turkish Cypriot area does that mean we don’t have to worry? If there’s a solution, what will happen? Are they [Turkish Cypriots] going to come back to this area?” Mavronikola said.
