On the side of Fili, at the table with Keratea

Environment minister Tina Birbili is standing by the residents of western Attica, the junkyard of the Basin, defending the need for a quick solution for Keratea in order to ease the environmental and governmental crisis that erupted last Monday due to the sudden withdrawal of riot police.

All eyes are now on the meeting on Thursday afternoon, when the minister is meeting with mayor Konstantinos Levantis and authorities of Lavreotiki to discuss the alternative proposal for waste management in the region, with the main demands of the change of location of the sanitary landfill and the establishment of a sorting and gasification plant to produce electricity from biogas in the Keratea industrial park.

Birbili’s circles are being very secretive about the stance the ministry will adopt in this meeting, which will either present a solution to the deadlock that is infecting the government headquarters or get us in major trouble with the danger of Fili, the usual junkyard of Attica, being unable to accept any more garbage from the Basin.  

“We cannot have all the garbage from the centre of Athens, the northern and eastern suburbs ending up in Fili just because we believe it’s the junkyard of Attica”, Birbili said yesterday in a radio interview on Vima FM, not excluding the possibility of moving the landfill, stressing however that “it is a difficult matter and we will have to be convinced about its feasibility”.

In order to achieve that there will have to be amendments in regional planning, which includes three landfills (Fili, Grammatiko, Keratea) and four plants for waste treatment. So far, Fili is the only plant that was developed from the original design, as well as Grammatiko to a certain extent, but the latter has still quite a long way to go.
 
“The end of Fili!”

The reactions of Fili as to what has been happening lately in terms of garbage are demonstrated in last week's City Council resolution. According to it, the Fili landfill will have stopped working by 2014 and the site will not accept any other waste management plan than that for its own production.

It is western Attica’s response to the war declared by Keratea against the regional planning that has also enraged Dimitris Bouraitis, the mayor of Fili. In fact, recently he sent a letter to the PM and the relevant ministers, sounding the alarm and insisting that the only landfill of the Basin has a life span of only 2,5 years and that the legitimacy of regional planning is only implemented in Fili.

Tension is heightened by the first-stage-win of Keratea, resulting in the fear that as long as the projects do not proceed, Fili will continue to be burdened, which exhausts the patience of the locals.

Until Birbili reveals her plans to the Keratea authorities, she is defending the need for open technology in the field of waste management that will serve as a consultation point with the citizens, dismissing the combustion of mixed waste without pre-treatment and promising to supply an immediate solution to the issue of Attica waste production.