The Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) process has been reinitiated for the Aliağa Ship Recycling Facility, which has been on the agenda for years due to discussions surrounding environmental and worker health. The report submitted to the Ministry indicates that the facility's usage area will be expanded.

The Aliağa Ship Recycling Facility has come back into focus as citizens in İzmir have long opposed it, citing damage to nature and risks to worker health. The company had previously requested this expansion, but it was reported that revisions would be made to the zoning plans in the region.

As a result, the process was halted; however, the Ministry of Environment, Urbanization, and Climate Change recently put the new zoning plans on hold. Following this decision, it was announced that the Ship Recycling Industrialists Association has made a new application to expand the area.

According to the new environmental impact assessment report submitted to the Ministry, the usage area on the seaside of the coastal boundary will be expanded. A total of 95 million 726 thousand 826 TL will be spent to implement this project. The company stated that 1,004 ships have been dismantled at facilities that are members of the Ship Recycling Industrialists Association in the last 10 years.

Seventeen organizations that previously came together shared an open letter to the European Commission regarding the cancellation of the ship recycling facility's European Union (EU) certifications. The statement indicated that the reason for the cancellation of the EU certification was non-compliance with environmental legislation and worker health and safety standards, and it was noted that the call for the cancellation of EU approval would remain valid until appropriate conditions were met.

In the 'Soil and Plant Pollution Final Report of the Aliağa Region' prepared by Ege University in previous years, it was stated that heavy metal analyses were conducted on plant samples specific to the Aliağa region and its surroundings, including evergreen olive, kermes oak, pubescent oak, cork oak, mastic tree, wild thyme, and laurel. It was emphasized that the metal concentrations of plant samples taken from the regions of Çakmaklı, Horozgediği, Ilıpınar, and Bozköy were found to be high.

A proposal was submitted recently to the Parliament with the signatures of 22 members of parliament, led by Labor Party deputies İskender Bayhan and Sevda Karaca. The proposal aims to systematically investigate worker deaths and environmental destruction at the Aliağa Ship Recycling Facility. The party called for the exposure of the current system that disregards workers' lives and sacrifices public health and natural life to the profit motives of capital, as well as for the accountability of those responsible.

Source: SeaNews Türkiye