Industrial waste directly discharged into Sea of Marmara 'to protect Ergene River'

Sea surface covered with marine mucilage. (Photo: AA/File)

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A group of environmentalists have filed a lawsuit demanding the halt of industrial waste discharge into the Sea of Marmara in Ergene River Basin in northwestern Turkey.

As part of the "Action Plan for the Protection of Ergene Basin," which was implemented in 2010, the industrial waste in the region is not discharged into the river but directly into the Sea of Marmara.

The Ergene River joins the Evros River in the northwest and meets the Aegean Sea in the Saros Bay. With the implementation of the action plan, the waste is discharged into the Sea of Marmara about 4.5 kilometers off the coast of Tekirdağ province.

"As a result of the project called Action Plan for the Protection of Ergene Basin, which started with the motto of saving the Ergene River from pollution, the discharge of industrial wastes into the Sea of Marmara and not the Ergene River, by the defendant company, dealt the fatal blow to the Sea of Marmara," said the group said in their petition.

The decay

Discharging wastes deep into the sea in the expectation that the undercurrent will bring them to the Black Sea in the north is a method that had been applied since 1989 and was a reason for the marine mucilage problem in Marmara today, the group noted in their petition.

"The Sea of Marmara, which has already been polluted extensively by industrial and domestic wastes, started to die and decay with the addition of the deep sea discharge from Ergene," they said.

"The decay in the Sea of Marmara started to show itself with the disaster of marine mucilage in April 2021. However, the mucilage is only the tip of the iceberg. The destruction that the mucilage caused is much more severe that what is seen on the surface.

The group demanded the court issue a preliminary injunction halting the deep sea discharge by the Tekirdağ Ergene Deep Sea Discharge Inc., which was founded by the companies operating in the organized industrial zone in the Ergene organized industrial zone.

They also demanded an expert examination to determine how much waste is discharged into the sea daily and what measures should be taken to prevent pollution. (PT/VK)