As garbage dump pollutes wells, Idlib officials slow to respond

IDLIB — Ten kilometers from the northern Idlib city of Maarat Misrin, the road bends sharply, curving around an abyss: the al-Hebat quarry. Few dare approach the edge of the chasm, which plunges 60 meters deep into the earth. 

Since 2018, the quarry has been converted into a major garbage dump, and neighboring villages are paying a heavy price. In al-Sanama and al-Hebat, just 300 meters away, groundwater wells that hundreds of people rely on have been contaminated by waste seeping into the ground, residents told Syria Direct. 

Established on public land in the 1980s, the 14-dunum al-Hebat quarry was once used to extract stone and building materials by blasting the rocky ground with dynamite. From 2011 to 2017, it became a mass grave, used by a range of armed opposition factions as a site for field executions and the burial of unidentified bodies, the Violations Documentation Center (VDC) reported in 2018. 

Today, the quarry is the main dumping site in the surrounding area of central Idlib. It is also poisoning farmer Khaled Ali al-Jaabi’s well in al-Sanama. “The well water was clear, suitable for drinking and daily use, but two months ago it turned yellow, with an awful smell,” he told Syria Direct.

The odor coming from al-Jaabi’s water is “similar to the smell of the neighboring dump,” he said. People in neighboring al-Hebat village are facing the same problem, as signs of contamination appear in their well water. 

Khaled al-Jaabi sits at the edge of his well in Idlib’s al-Sanama village, showing a bottle of discolored water contaminated by the al-Hebat dump, 27/5/2024 (Abd Almajed Alkarh/Syria Direct)

Last year, al-Jaabi dug a 250-meter well after obtaining a license from the Ministry of Agriculture in the local Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS)-backed Salvation Government. Digging and equipping the well cost more than $5,000. But when its water changed color and began to smell two months ago, “I stopped using it,” he said.

“The water was good, we used it for drinking, making tea and cooking,” al-Jaabi said. When it became contaminated, he stopped using it to water his crops, “for fear they could be contaminated” and “impact our children’s health.” Today, he only uses his well to water the trees on his 13 dunums of land, five of which are planted with summer vegetables. 

In neighboring al-Hebat, Yasser al-Bakour’s well, which he dug in 2015, was once a source of “pure” water for seven families. At times, it was also a source for trucked water in the area. He installed a water tap to dispense water free of cost to passersby, he told Syria Direct. 

Yasser al-Bakour, from al-Hebat village, fills a bottle of water from his well, which has been contaminated by a nearby dump, 27/5/2024 (Abd Almajed Alkarh/Syria Direct)

A year ago, Yasser also noticed a change in the color of the water. At first, he thought it had mixed with water from a nearby spring, or that the level of water in the well had fallen, causing the “yellowish tint.” Then, three months ago, a stench began to emanate from the well. 

“I took a sample of the water and had it analyzed at a lab belonging to the Salvation Government Ministry of Agriculture for $56. The result was that the water had bacterial contamination,” Yasser said. He analyzed it again to confirm, and “the result was the same.” 

“They warned me not to use the water for drinking, or even watering crops, and asked me to file a complaint,” he recalled. 

Slow response

Since signs of contamination began to appear in wells near the al-Hebat quarry, five wells in the village and three in al-Sanama have been analyzed. The results showed that all the tested wells were contaminated, Samer al-Bakour, who also lives in al-Hebat, said. 

“Not all the wells have had their water analyzed because of the high cost of the analysis,” Samer explained. However, he expects “all the 33 wells in the area are contaminated, because people have noticed the color change in all of them.” 

Siraj al-Hariri, a geologist and environmental protection activist, said one of the causes of the pollution is “sewage from the informal camps near the quarry, which became a dump, since it is poured into it.” 

Ali Ramadan, the head of the Investment Department at the Salvation Government’s Water Resources Directorate and a member of a committee tasked with monitoring water pollution, said the primary cause of the contamination is “a rise in water levels due to increased rainfall last winter, which collected in the dump.” 

“The heavy rains, which increased the water level in the dump, and the discharge of sewage from one of the camps nearby, put us in a bind,” said al-Jaabi, who can no longer use his contaminated well. 

The water level in the al-Hebat quarry-turned-dump reached a height of “eight meters, distributed over its entire area, which led to water leaking into the soil,” Samer said. 

“Analyses showed the presence of microbial contamination in a number of wells in the area, but not all of them are contaminated,” Ramadan, of the Water Resources Directorate, said. “The contamination is present in one water vein.” 

Years before their wells were contaminated, in 2020 local residents objected to the dump’s presence and blocked municipal vehicles from reaching it. Rather than responding to their demands, “10 young men were arrested and detained for 24 hours,” Samer recalled. “Notables from al-Hebat village were asked to sign a pledge not to interfere with the vehicles, and they were released.”

“From the start, we rejected the quarry being converted into a garbage dump. We warned the wells could be contaminated, but government officials assured us the area would not be harmed,” Samer said, referring to the Salvation Government. 

Now that villagers’ fears have been realized, local officials have been slow to respond. Samer filed a complaint with authorities in Idlib’s central area, headquartered in Maarat Misrin, back in March. They did not respond until several days before Syria Direct spoke to him months later, at which time “they showed responsiveness and said they were following up on the problem with the Salvation Government,” he said. 

“We’ve filed several complaints, and have been promised the necessary measures would be taken, but the problem persists,” he added.

Some 1,500 people live in al-Hebat and 700 in neighboring al-Sanama, according to estimates from sources in the villages. All rely on groundwater wells for drinking water and irrigation.

Without potable well water, residents have to take on the burden of “going to neighboring villages to get clean water,” Samer said. His family needs 5,000 cubic liters a week. 

Samer al-Bakour, from al-Hebat village, fills a bottle from a spigot in his home’s garden, showing the change in the color of the water due to bacterial contamination, 27/5/2024 (Abd Almajed Alkarh/Syria Direct)

Searching for solutions

On one hand, establishing central dumps is a good solution to reduce arbitrary dumping. This is especially true of northwestern Syria, where more than 4 million people live, half of them displaced, distributed among more than 1,900 camps. 

Read more: Idlib camps face ‘harsh summer’ after losing sanitation services

However, the failure to manage dumps and mitigate their harmful effects on humans and the environment turns them into a source of danger for the region as a whole, as well as residents of nearby areas, as in the case of the al-Hebat dump. 

While the most pressing crisis at the moment is the contamination of wells near the dump, other repercussions include “the spread of skin diseases among children due to the bites of insects that live in the environment of the dump,” al-Jaabi said. “In some cases, a fly bite requires a child to be treated at a hospital.”

Air pollution is another problem. When the east wind blows, the air grows thick with smoke from waste being burned at the dump. This, in turn, causes respiratory illnesses among residents, a number of villagers told Syria Direct. 

Poor air quality also affects the “labor force” in the area, Yasser said. “Many workers no longer want to work on our lands because of the unpleasant odors emitted during the burning of waste.”

The al-Hebat quarry became a de facto dump with “an increasing number of councils and municipalities dumping garbage into it since 2018,” Fayad Hussein, the public relations director at E-Clean, a waste management company in Idlib, said. His company has been using the dump since 2022. 

Despite the dump’s impact on health and the environment, the current contamination crisis could be “a minor problem, if it is dealt with appropriately and the dump is urgently isolated,” al-Hariri, the geologist and environmental activist, said. 

In his view, there are steps that can be taken towards sustainable solutions. These include removing contaminated fluid from the base of the quarry and drying it, fully isolating the western or eastern portion of the dump and moving accumulated waste to it, or creating a dedicated, isolated reservoir to collect liquid. The ground should also be treated to address remnants of waste currently leaking into it, he said.

Al-Hariri has presented his solutions as proposals to several parties, including the Salvation Government’s Ministry of Agriculture and Ministry of Local Administration, as well as the E-Clean company. He also advised “periodically flushing water from the contaminated wells to renew the groundwater, and working to conduct water analyses on a weekly basis to monitor pollution.” 

Safe waste disposal requires sorting and recycling, especially of organic waste, which is a major source of contamination, al-Hariri noted. He emphasized the need to isolate dumps and convert them into sanitary landfills—sites where waste is isolated from the surrounding environment and groundwater until it is safe—that meet environmental conditions. 

E-Clean has contacted a number of humanitarian organizations to convert the al-Hebat dump into a sanitary landfill, but “no step has been taken in this direction so far,” Hussein said. 

With no signs of a solution in the near term, what the people of al-Hebat and al-Sanama want is “the complete removal of the garbage and closure of the dump,” Samer said. 

This report was originally published in Arabic and translated into English by Mateo Nelson.