On January 10, 2017, an airplane faced a large flock of birds, namely seagulls, at departure. On the following day, Judge Hasan Hamdan sanctioned the short-term closure of the Costa Brava landfill after the Transportation Minister Youssef  Finianos called the situation an emergency. Regarding this issue, Member of Parliament Walid Jumblatt also tweeted:” Regardless of what the price was, the waste dump should be kept away from Beirut’s airport so that a disaster doesn’t occur as yesterday” [1]. Moreover, as a response to the incident, Prime Minister Saad Al-Hariri called for equipping the Rafic El- Hariri International Airport with ultrasonic bird repellents. Additional temporary solutions constituted of employing experts to kill seagulls, diverting flights to other runways, and putting in field patrols at the runway 16 to guarantee safety.  After the judicial decision, the contractor responsible for waste management in Beirut southern environs and Baabda stopped the waste collection activities. Fearing that garbage would once again pile-up in the streets of Beirut and its suburbs, Judge Hasan Hamdan ruled to reopen the Costa Brava Landfill for a period of one week, on January 16. The judge gave a period of four months until the permanent closure of the landfill, thus giving time for the municipalities to find replacements for the dump site. However, in February, Beirut Southern Suburbs municipalities Union appealed the judge’s decision considering that the landfill should not be closed until an alternative is found. Mohamad Dergham, head of the municipalities union, said: “Our demand is to find a permanent alternative for the Costa Brava site and not to have trash piling up in the streets”[2]. On April 21, 2017, the Choueifat Municipality insisted that the Council for Development and Reconstruction (CDR) mobilizes against this crisis before the temperature starts rising in the summer. Choueifat Mayor Jihad Haidar stated: “This situation has been getting worse over the past week”[3]. Protestors also blocked the entry to the Costa Brava landfill and organized a rally to increase people’s awareness about the landfill’s impact on the environment. On June 13, 2017, while inspecting the Bourj Hammoud Landfill, Tarek Al-Khatib, the Lebanese Minister of Environment, indicated that dumping the waste in the sea is a crucial part of the trash plan. It is important to note that his statement also applies to Costa Brava Landfill since it is located near the coast and is a part of the temporary plan.

The Costa Brava landfill (Khaldeh) is situated at 167 meters (0.1 miles) away from Rafik El- Hariri International Airport. It is located near the shore where a beach resort is present. The Landfill is designed to receive approximately 1.5 million tons of waste from Beirut and its suburbs (e.g. Baabda). The Ministry of Environment based its selection of the Costa Brava site to paragraphs 2-3 of Cabinet Decision No. 1 of 12/1/2015, namely that “the final disposal of the waste resulting from its treatment should be achieved by rehabilitating degraded sites, and/or random dump sites and/ or any other sites in need of rehabilitation”[4]. Moreover, a consultant of the former Minister of Agriculture, Sawsan Bou Fakhreddine declared that “the decision to open landfills there was based on the theory that these areas (Bourj Hammoud and Choueifat) are already polluted” [5]. The main rules of the plan consist of the recovery of 60 percent of the waste through sorting, recycling, reclamation and recovery of energy during the first three years of commitment, with the increase to 75 percent in subsequent years, leading to thermal disintegration. Accordingly, before dumping the waste into the landfill, the waste is supposed to be sorted at the Amroussieh sorting facility. However, activity started by temporarily open dumping the waste while the area is being transformed into a sanitary landfill; therefore, the waste is not being sorted. As a compensation for the acceptance of the waste, the municipalities affected by the landfills are to be given $8 million a year.

Activists and officials that opposed the project stated that it will lead to air and water pollution as well as endanger the aviation safety since it is very close to the airport. In January 10, 2017, a plane faced a large group of birds which caused an accident during take-off to happen. As a response, the judge of urgent matter Hasan Hamdan decided to close the landfill temporarily until an alternative is found. However, the landfill was reopened and it is still operating until now.