This headline in Athens News must be intended as a joke!
Above it is a photo of Eirinaios with the headline:
His laity, his bishops and his peers have told him to go. His passion may have just begun.
Whether they meant it or not, he is surely in the shit with the whole Greek Orthodox Church over a deal with the Israelis over land in Jerusalem. Not that the rest of the Church is whiter than white with scandals in Greek over bishops involved in trial fixing and links with drug dealers.
The headline is actually about a new environmental mess:
Repeated protests from the people of Piraeus ... against a proposed method of sewage treatment on the island of Psyttaleia forced Attica's water treatment company EYDAP to scrap plans to build a plant for volatilisation on the island. The method would have burned solid waste into greenhouse gases, leaving a dry cake that could be used as a combustible in industrial furnaces.
Doesn't Greece have a plan to reduce greenhouse gases as part of the EU's commitment to Kyoto? Silly me, of course it doesn't. So greenhouse gases are not a problem!
It seems that the plant to do this greenhouse gas production is only at the experimental stage (??) and would not have got environmental permits. Surprise, surprise.
So the production of 700 tons of sewage sludge per day will continue, which is being illegally stored on the island and impractical or possibly dangerous (???) to dump it at the local landfill. (!!!) The drying facility might be ready by 2007 according to the Minister. Yet another bad use of EU funds which no doubt might have to be repaid.
This is going to be a very difficult summer for Pireaus because of the stench.says the Pireas Prefect.
But isn't Pireas the main port for ferries, with millions of tourist passing through? A good job it isn't the year of the Olympics.
It gets worse: sludge already dumped in the Ano Liosia landfill has been causing landslides. Dumping was stopped until recently when the amount of sludge at Psyttaleia was threatening to overflow into the Saronic Sea and cause large damage to the local ecosystem.
The problem has arisen because Greece is already seriously in the shit with the EU over requirements to provide proper waste disposal instead of having lots of illegal dumping. NIMBYs are preventing the establishment of large landfill sites, which does not stop us all having to put up with everyone dumping their waste, especially building rubble on any empty piece of land. As for the rest of what is dumped out of sight, who knows what is really going on where.
Animals have better hygienic arrangements than humans, and manage not to foul their own homes.
