Plans to send sludge abroad
The government said yesterday that it was looking for a European country to accept thousands of tons of partially treated sewage that it has been unable to dump in Greece. The plan is to transport around 60,000 tons of sludge from a waste processing plant on Psyttaleia, an islet off Piraeus, to a foreign country with the appropriate facilities to treat it, according to a statement released by the Public Works Ministry yesterday. The remaining 90,000 tons of the sludge would either be burned or deposited in a compost factory in Ano Liosia, the ministry said. An earlier proposal to export the sludge to Sudan – a move which sparked protests by environmentalists when suggested in November – has been silently dropped. The Athens Water Supply and Sewage Company (EYDAP) said it had examined proposals to dispose of the sludge in Greece but had run into «strong objections from local communities.»
