Take the many woes afflicting Lebanon — electricity blackouts, traffic congestion, lack of parking, pollution, water shortages and overflowing sewers — and now amplify them; this is the scenario facing the city if steps are not taken to see that infrastructure is updated to cope with the number of new buildings being added to the grid in the next few years.
With approximately 350 residential buildings under construction in Beirut alone, the added demand on an already strained infrastructure grid will be too much for it to take, assuming, of course, that the buildings are inhabited. If this is the case, the consequences on the quality of life will resonate for everyone. While the real estate boom since 2005 has been heralded as a mark of Lebanon’s economic success, an urban disaster looms as a result of poor planning.
Real estate developers may have “Plan B” solutions to supply utilities to their buildings, like generators and private wells, but these solutions are costly, environmentally irresponsible and shortsighted.
Even if the private sector can solve utility supply deficiencies, they can do nothing about an overflow of sewage or a traffic jam outside the building’s front door. In such a scenario, the luxury living that developers are offering only extends to the end of the driveway.
And while Solidere may be the only area of the city where some sense of urban planning and infrastructure management has been executed, even the Beirut Central District will not be spared the overflow of traffic from the rest of the city, the increase in air and water pollution and the shortage of water supply.
The lack of basic services in the city will also distinguish the “haves” and the “have-nots” much more clearly, adding fuel to the fire of a class conflict that already simmers beneath the surface of sectarian loyalties. Revolts in the streets over electricity cuts last summer come vividly to mind. With no government and a tense political situation, addressing the most basic factors that make a city livable has slipped off the list of priorities. What is worse is that while the civic infrastructure is already behind, the construction moves ever forward, increasing the gap the next government will need to cover once the cabinet is formed, and increasing the long-term social, physical and economic costs inflicted on the people.
“The private sector cares about its profits and portfolio, but they forget about the roads”
As if there weren’t enough cars already…
At present, the government has no plan to deal with the increase in the number of cars on Beirut’s roads that will result from urban growth and the high number of residential complexes going up in the city.
The only traffic initiative being successfully implemented is the Urban Transportation Development Program (UTDP), under the oversight of the Council of Development and Reconstruction. The program, which aims to increase both mobility and safety in Greater Beirut, includes the installation of bridges and tunnels, traffic lights, signage, camera surveillance for traffic violations and the opening of a Traffic Management Center. It also deals with parking, which Project Manager Elie Helou classified as “the number one issue slowing movement on the streets today.”
The program, which is two-thirds of the way finished, has taken years to implement since an initial study was done in 2001. After securing funds and approval, construction began in 2005. While it will decrease bottlenecks and increase the flow of traffic to some extent, Helou suggested that the improvements made will be compromised by the significant increase in the number of cars on the road, which already exceeds projections made in 2001.
“These mega-towers are not helping,” he said. “The private sector cares about its profits and portfolio, but they forget about the roads. They put in parking, but this doesn’t change the size of the road. We are looking at a big problem, especially in areas like Ashrafieh where the streets are very narrow.”
Helou anticipates that over the next five years, Beirut’s already terrible traffic problems will only get worse; peak times for traffic today are pushing closer to periods of three hours each, from what used to be between 7 and 9 in the morning and 5 to 7 at night. Helou estimates that the interim hours, when traffic moves freely, will slowly be filled in.
“People will be stuck driving between five to 10 kilometers per hour all day long in Beirut,” he predicted. “We’re not far from the choking point.”
According to Helou, the only sustainable solution to the city’s traffic problem would be to create more efficient forms of public transportation to reduce car use in the city.
“The government thinks that the only way to solve traffic is by adding more roads,” he said. “But this is also part of the problem. When you increase the number of roads, you increase demand, and it just becomes a vicious cycle.”
What is needed instead is a strategy for changing behavior by adopting measures that discourage cars, such as decreasing street parking or raising its price. However, this cannot be done until an efficient and affordable alternative mode of transportation is available.
At present, there is a project being financed by the Paris Regional Authority in coordination with the Municipality of Beirut to improve citizen mobility through public transportation options. Architectural and urban planning consultancy URBI won the bid for the project and is in the first stage of conducting studies.
“Beirut is not unique in its problems,” said Habib Debs, owner of URBI. “Other cities have had these problems and solved them. There is no excuse for the government not to learn from other cases and address these issues.”
“For each year that nothing is done, we are looking at an average decrease of one hour of electricity per day… Big towers stress the network heavily”
Grinding the grid
A shortage of electricity supply is already considered a sign of governmental impotence in Lebanon. “Today we are planning backwards for a demand in the past,” said Raymond Ghajar, senior adviser to the caretaker minister of energy and water. “We are already 1,000 megawatts behind.” Last June, the ministry proposed an energy policy under then Minister of Energy and Water Gebran Bassil that accounts for a large surge in demand, but it is not being implemented due to the collapse of the government.
“We had a clear recommendation plan to deal with the urgent issue of supplying energy for this summer,” Ghajar said, referring to a plan to bring power rental barges that would sit off the coast during the summer to provide additional electricity. Fast, reliable and cost efficient, the solution has proven effective in countries like Yemen, Iraq, Nigeria and Pakistan.
“We needed money from the government to launch the tenders and it was not even discussed in the Council of Ministers,” he said. Unable to address even the most imminent of electricity crises, the ministry is ill-positioned to take on the challenges being posed to the electricity grid in the coming two to three years, when many new buildings now under construction will be finished. Many of these are high-end, meaning they feature energy-guzzling digital and electronic features.
“There is no plan to bring the grid up to speed with the level of construction, at least not in the coming six months to one year,” said an executive in the cable business who requested anonymity. “There is no plan to figure out how to service the needs of all these new buildings,” he said, adding that his company is selling far more cables than the electricity grid can sustain, given that the grid was not build to supply the types of mega-structures that are increasingly coming online.
“For each year that nothing is done, we are looking at an average decrease of one hour of electricity per day,” Ghajar said. Because the rolling blackout schedule is different across the country, the decrease will be distributed unequally. “If the north and south are getting electricity for about 50 percent of the time, let’s say that they will be getting it for something more like 30 percent of the time,” he estimated. “Big towers stress the network heavily.”
Although buildings beyond a certain size are required by law to have their own transformers, they still add stress to the network via feeder cables, which are already operating at more than 100 percent of their intended capacity, by Ghajar’s estimation. “What most people do not realize is that electricity cut-offs during summer are usually due to an overload on the system, not a shortage of electricity,” he said.
Overloads lead to underground fires, a deterioration of electricity service when cables are being replaced, and an increase in technical losses (power that is lost without being used, usually caused by poor distribution infrastructure) for Electricité du Liban (EDL), Lebanon’s public electricity provider, which is already operating at a loss that is subsidized every year by the Ministry of Finance, adding to the public deficit. With recorded technical losses already nearly double the worldwide standard, additional losses will be difficult to sustain. And it does not help matters that of the country’s four operating power plants, two (Zouk, Jiyeh) are roughly 40 years old.
Generators are the private sector solution to the electricity deficit, but they are expensive and unhealthy to use. Electricity from a generator is at least three times more than the price per kilowatt of electricity charged by EDL, regardless of fuel price, according to Ghajar. “Five years ago, private electricity was cheaper than public electricity, but now diesel has become expensive,” he said.
Because the price of running the generator is pegged to the price of diesel, generator use is due to grow more expensive. Prices for private electricity can’t be regulated as legally speaking, the providers don’t exist. “To declare them illegal we have to have a substitute to provide the electricity the country needs, and we don’t have that,” he admitted.
Without the ability to police the business, rates for private electricity vary wildly within just a few kilometers, depending on how much the local population can afford to pay. Despite the fact that it is an illegal business, Ghajar estimates the revenue private electricity suppliers earned in 2010 in the range of $1.7 billion. This figure is set to grow to $4.5 billion by 2015.
Prices aside, generators pose significant health and environmental consequences. “Private generators are spewing diesel,” Ghajar said. With a coming increase in traffic and in generators, Beirut is looking at even higher levels of air pollution. A standard generator produces 25 to 30 pounds of nitrogen oxide per megawatt hour, which can damage lung tissue, increase susceptibility to respiratory infection and contribute to chronic lung diseases such as asthma, especially for children and the elderly.
Worst of all, because diesel exhaust contains other substances such as arsenic, benzene, formaldehyde and nickel, it poses a significant cancer risk. According to estimates issued by the National Air Toxics Assessment of the United States Environmental Protection Agency, cancer risk from exposure to diesel emissions is 10 times higher than the combined cancer risk from all other hazardous air pollutants. The California Air Resources Board estimates that operating an uncontrolled one-megawatt diesel generator for just 250 hours per year results in a 50 percent increase in cancer risk to residents living within one city block of the engine.
Beyond individual health risks, diesel emissions also contribute to smog, atmospheric haze, acid rain and climate change. Diesel-fueled generators are neither a safe nor cost effective solution to Lebanon’s electricity problems, and they are poisoning the population and the environment gradually over time.
Because the day when Lebanon will be able to switch to alternative power sources remains distant at best, the most practical short-term solution for reducing emissions from generators would be to enforce the installation of proper filtration systems. But because the generator business is illegal, even this form of minimal control on the behalf of public health and the environment would be impossible for the government to enforce.
Even small initiatives appear to be difficult to implement. Last year the ministry began a campaign to promote solar water heating, but this has fallen behind due to the country’s political impasse. Sustainable solutions for private electricity such as solar power generators are perfect for a country like Lebanon that gets approximately 10 months of sunshine per year, but their installation would have to be taken up by private initiative, as the public sector is paralyzed by more existential problems.
Operating an uncontrolled one-megawatt diesel generator for just 250 hours per year results in a 50 percent increase in cancer risk to residents living nearby
Thirsty towers
The Ministry of Energy and Water (MoEW) has prepared a National Water Sector Strategy (NWSS) based on population growth of 1.74 percent per year in Lebanon over the next 25 years. The estimates are based on growth trends in Lebanon over the last five years, meaning they don’t factor in the water demand of Beirut’s myriad high-rises that will be completed over the next four years. “We have taken things into consideration on a national level. Population growth has been accounted for, but not on a location by location level,” said Abdo Tayar, adviser to the MoEW. Tayar advised Executive to speak with the Beirut and Mount Lebanon Water Establishment, but they were not available for comment.
According to Tayar, for buildings with as many concentrated dwellings as some of those in the works in Beirut, public water supply may not have the capacity to service their needs. “They can apply for a private well if the need for it is justified,” he said. Licensing for a well is subject to strict regulations; what happens more often than not is that many developers choose to avoid the hassle and dig their own wells without licensing. On top of the fact that the water cannot be measured for efficient forecasting, the practice of illegal well drilling depletes the groundwater supply for everyone.
“Five-hundred-million cubic meters of water underground are replenished every year by nature, and we are already extracting more than that today,” said Tayar. With levels of water use already at unsustainable levels, 350 more buildings in Beirut will only make matters worse, adding to existing water shortages and to water salinity due to saltwater intrusion. This occurs when seawater enters fresh water aquifers due to changes in underground water pressure, a process exacerbated by extracting excessive groundwater from wells.
According to hydro-geologist Mark Saadeh, there is a wide range of consequences of increased water salinity. On a household level, salinized water causes corrosion of pipes, which leads to cracks and leaks in the walls through which pipes enter the house. It also prevents soap from lathering for daily washing, making cleaning of any kind much more difficult. More dramatically, if salinized water is used in construction to mix concrete, it could have disastrous consequences in the event of a future earthquake. As Beirut is an increasingly dense city sitting near the branch of the Yammouneh fault line, the region’s most volatile, which was responsible for the famous earthquake that struck the city in 1956, the concern is valid.
“Water mixed into concrete has to be as good as drinking water, which is rarely the case in Lebanon,” Saadeh said, explaining that the highly salinized water in Beirut can corrode the foundation of a building, thereby decreasing its stability.
What goes in…
“If each person in Lebanon today uses around 200 liters of water per day, then you can estimate that at least that same amount is being dumped across the coastline,” Saadeh said. The more people that Beirut accommodates, the more untreated sewage it will release onto the coastline. An increase in the level of coastal water pollution is a problem that has not received sufficient attention due to public misconceptions, even among the highly educated, about saltwater being able to dilute and sterilize wastewater to safe levels.
“One gram of human feces contains 10 million viruses and up to two million species of bacteria,” Saadeh said, explaining, “while salinity disinfects to a certain extent, it does not sterilize… and viruses do not respond to salinity.” Raw sewage outlets release directly onto the coast, and as the general volume of wastewater increases, so will the concentration of the sewage. “People are already fishing and swimming in it,” Saadeh said, pointing to sewage outpoints that dump wastewater into the sea on a daily basis just beside the luxury beach resorts of Movenpick and Riviera.
Worse than sewage at the beach, however, is sewage at the front door. There is already great pressure on the existing sewage network, meaning an even greater load will lead to overflowing sewage in the streets. This can already be seen when it rains and a sudden increase in pressure causes overflow of the combined rainwater and sewage systems.
Exposure to raw sewage can lead to a host of diseases transmitted by the fecal matter of humans, rats and other pests. Certain disease-causing microorganisms can enter through the nose, mouth and eyes, either through splashes from street-level or through inhalation as a fine mist or dust. An overflow of raw sewage can also contaminate the water supply network through groundwater, according to Saadeh.
While it is theoretically possible to update the network, doing so would be both costly and disruptive. Sewage pipes are laid beneath roadways, so each time pipes are changed or repaired, the traffic must be stopped, sometimes for several days. Installing larger pipes can cost around $1 million per kilometer.
“It is more costly to lay down a new pipe like this than it is to build a road,” said a civil engineer who requested anonymity due to a conflict of interest with his position. He claims that bigger sewage pipes are needed all over the city, but the size of the roads dictate how big a pipe can be. Large buildings going up on narrow roads spell trouble.
Saadeh urges for the treatment of wastewater to ease the demand on water supply, and while many treatment plants have been constructed across Lebanon, often with help from foreign aid, they remain empty and idle. “We are missing about 80 percent of the staff required to run this utility efficiently,” the MoEW’s Tayar admitted. As usual, in Lebanon the problem is implementation of an idea.
“These issues need to be tackled on a long-term basis and the ministry cannot do this when it’s changing every four years,” said Saadeh. “It is chronically a problem of implementation, not of money, and as a result, foreign aid agencies have already begun to give up and leave,” he added, citing the examples of the Japanese International Cooperation Agency (JICA) and the Gesellschaft fur Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) — Japanese and German engines of foreign aid. “They see Lebanon as a hopeless case,” he said. “There are other countries where they can concentrate money and effort to make real changes.”
“This is a loss that affects everyone… whether they live in a luxury tower or not”
Quality of Life
“Urban planning in Lebanon is always equated with infrastructure, but there are social, economic, political, environmental and cultural dimensions to consider as well,” said Mona Harb, assistant professor and coordinator for the Graduate Program in Urban Planning and Design at the American University of Beirut. “It is all of these together that make up quality of life.” As traffic, pollution, energy and water are set to become increasingly problematic, quality of life in Beirut is in obvious decline. “The municipality is barely keeping up infrastructure, and there is no reflection on what could be done. The Director General of Urbanism is not doing anything — not only in Beirut, but on a Lebanese level; people are ahead of the law, and it is always a matter of how to catch up instead of how to plan,” she said.
One of the most pressing issues contributing to the decreasing quality of life in the city is access to public pedestrian space. Without public spaces, the city is linked through a detached, private network, similar to that of the Gulf, said Harb. “This is a loss that affects everyone, regardless of whether they live in a luxury tower or not,” she said. “The more you experience the city by vehicle, the less interaction and social diversity you have.”
Harb points to this last point as problematic for long term sustainable civil peace of the country, given that social segregation leads to polarization and ignorance between different groups, which then sows a fertile ground for the type of hatred that spurs urban violence.
Instead of taking something away from the city, Harb suggests that developers recognize their power and responsibility toward the city with a plan to give something back. “It could be a small park, a level of parking, preserving a heritage house… there are many possibilities,” she said.
Because the strength of the private sector relies on the fact that the state of Lebanon is weak and inefficient, expecting the state to pick up the pieces when housing projects overload the infrastructure is irresponsible development. Before considering private gyms, swimming pools and spas, developers would be better suited to think about what the city really needs and take a wider perspective of the old adage that ‘location is everything.’ No matter how tall the tower, no one wants to live in a city where nothing works.
