Larko waste-dumping at sea to stop in 2004
Calling on the government to revoke a mining company’s permit to dump millions of tons of toxic waste into the sea over the next two years, environmental activists yesterday took over parts of the company’s waste-loading facilities in central Greece. The international group Greenpeace, whose members staged yesterday’s protest at the Larko plant beside the village of Larymna, north of Thebes, says the mining company dumps about a million tons of waste each year in the northern Gulf of Evia. The sludge contains heavy metals such as mercury, nickel, cadmium and chrome that Greenpeace says are poisoning marine life. Greenpeace called off the protest when the Development Ministry promised Larko’s permit to dump waste into the sea would not be renewed after December 2004. After that, the ministry said, the waste will be dumped on land.
