"I am hoping it might collapse so I can find more aluminium," said Mohammed Mawad, standing amid the toxic chaos of the four-storey high, 600,000 cubic metres of garbage, soil, concrete debris, hospital waste and occasional dead animal.

"I have been scavenging like this for copper and aluminium for a year now," said the former construction worker, as a wave broke and dragged more plastic bags out to the turquoise waters of the Mediterranean. "I can earn an average of LL100,000 (US$68) a day. That's more than I would make working in the city."

Mawad's fondness for the rubbish mountain is not widely shared by residents of Lebanon's southern port city of Sidon, on the outskirts of which the huge garbage dump stands, right on the edge of the sea.

Toxic blight

Established in 1975 as a temporary municipal tip, the rubbish mountain has grown over three decades of civil war, invasion and government neglect to become an open air dump for hundreds of thousands of tonnes of refuse from homes, factories, hospitals and slaughter houses, as well as debris from buildings destroyed in the 1982 Israeli invasion.

The mountain has repeatedly caught fire and at least three times partially collapsed into the sea, prompting complaints from Cyprus, Syria and Turkey after currents swept rubbish onto their beaches.

A collapse last month, following strong winds and an earthquake, sent about 150 tonnes of rubbish into the sea, snaring fishing lines and choking sea turtles which, environmentalists say, mistake the white plastic bags for jellyfish, their favourite food.

"When we go out our engines get clogged with garbage and our nets get cut," said fisherman Abu Hassan, as he picked his way through the rubbish, looking for items to scavenge. "I can't fish as much as I would like. At any time hundred of tonnes of garbage could collapse again."

Health risk

Air pollution from the mountain, located near schools, hospitals and apartment blocks in Lebanon's third biggest city, has meant Sidon's children suffer more from asthma than children anywhere else in Lebanon, which doctors say is directly linked to the dump.

"We have cases of asthma, respiratory problems, insect bites, rodent infestations, not to mention allergies caused by the hazardous chemicals slipping into the sea water," said Tarek Hussary, a doctor from Sidon.

Organically rich effluent leaching from the mountain into the soil and the sea has destroyed marine life across a radius of 500 metres out to sea, according to mayor of Sidon Abdul Rahman Bizri.

The open air tip has also tarnished Sidon's image in the all important tourism sector.

Rubbish politics

Today, bitter political divisions and an absence of clear policy are thwarting efforts to solve one of Lebanon's most enduring environmental problems.

Mayor Bizri, who presides over the only large Sunni city to support the Hezbollah-led opposition, blames a political stalemate - that has left the country without a president or a functioning parliament - for derailing clean-up plans for the mountain.

Having made a technical evaluation of the waste and obtained legal documents from the Ministry of Environment, Sidon municipality secured a US$5 million grant from billionaire Saudi Prince Walid bin Talal, who has family ties to Sidon, for the removal of the mountain.

But, said Bizri, a plan to dump the non-recyclable waste in an unused quarry site just outside the city was shelved because local residents objected, he said, under pressure from the government coalition led by the Future party of the Sidon-born former premier, Rafik Hariri.

"We are the only large Sunni city in the opposition. There was political pressure applied to the villages neighbouring the quarry to reject our plan," said Bizri. "The government wants to punish us by preventing a solution to the mountain."

A spokesman for the Future party in Sidon ignored several requests by IRIN to comment on the accusations. As yet, only $1m of the grant money has been received, and little of it spent.

Exasperated

Bizri said a new contractor would begin reducing the mountain by the end of March by sifting the rubbish from the soil, which would then be treated and used in construction. A long-term solution for the thousands of tonnes of toxic waste, however, remains elusive.

Many residents of this proud, sea-faring city, whose very name is said to mean fishing, are increasingly exasperated that while their politicians feud, the sea on which so many of their livelihoods depends grows more polluted by the day.

"Walid bin Talal gave us $5 million, but where did the money go?" demanded fisherman Abu Hassan. "All the municipalities say they want to do something, but in fact they are all just working for their own benefit, not for the people." -IRIN