The Msailha dam (Batroun) was sealed on Tuesday by order of the first investigating judge of North Lebanon, Samaranda Nassar, who is investigating this case which is suspected of embezzlement of public funds, a judicial source told to L'Orient-Le Jour.
The sealing came a month after the financial prosecutor's office sent the file to Judge Nassar, in order to shed light on the $64 million that the dam cost the Lebanese state, without the structure ever being able to hold back a single drop of water, the source explained. They added that the dam would need an additional $10 million for waterproofing work.
Judge Nassar visited the dam on Tuesday to inspect it and found that the place was abandoned and that one of the guards was even raising chickens in one of the buildings. About 20 bulldozers and machinery were also abandoned at the site, while the adjacent offices were in a deplorable state.
The justice system, which is pursuing several contractors who worked on the site, should soon collect evidence on site, before launching an expert appraisal of the construction. The contractors, for their part, have recently presented exceptions of form, according to the judicial source interviewed. The justice system has also asked the Energy Ministry to provide it with documents relating to the construction of the dam.
Filled with water in December 2019 and nestled a few meters from the historic fort of Msailha (17th century), the dam has contributed, among other things, to disfiguring the landscape. But it is especially criticized by environmental activists who denounce the interest of large dams, promoted in Lebanon by the leader of the Free Patriotic Movement (FPM) Gebran Bassil, and considered by many to be costly, factors of profound changes to the environment and ineffective, due to the karstic nature (therefore very permeable) of the soil in Mount Lebanon.
Designed to hold up to six million cubic meters of water and supply the villages in the region, the dam has never managed to fulfill this task. This prompted the Energy Ministry to close the structure's valves for three weeks in May 2022, "to check the proper functioning of the dam and decide, accordingly, what work remains to be done," caretaker Energy Minister Walid Fayad told L'Orient-Le Jour. A process that had dried up part of al-Joz River at the time, according to the NGO Terre Liban.
Terre-Liban also denounced the resumption of this process in 2024 by the ministry, "under the pretext of carrying out endless tests just like in May 2022", in a press release published on May 27 by the state-run National News Agency (NNA). "The Ministry of Energy never tires of attempts to hide its failure and the defects of the dam," stated the NGO.
Last May, Fayad announced that he had signed the new "national strategy for the water sector" which aims to reorganize, rehabilitate and modernize the way water resources in the country are managed, which is one of the major challenges that the authorities must address. Despite the controversy, this strategy includes several dam projects to be built or rehabilitated, such as the highly controversial Bisri dam (in Chouf), the Msailha Dam and the Balaa Dam currently under construction (near Tannourine).
Water management is a major issue for Lebanon, which is one of the richest in this area in the Middle East, but which manages its resources very poorly, despite the various strategies launched since the end of the civil war in 1990.
This article originally appeared in French in L'Orient-Le Jour.