ZOUK MIKAEL, Lebanon — In a small garage in Zouk Mikael, a coastal town 20 kilometers (14 miles) north of Beirut, Hamid Dabkey looks at the decrepit exterior of the town’s power station, just 200 meters (650 feet) away. Dabkey’s garage is located on the ground floor of a six-story residential complex. A number of other apartment blocks line the road. Grey plumes of smoke rise from the plant’s two red and white chimneys, snaking between buildings, pushed inland by a breeze coming off the Mediterranean.

“Around once a month, the smoke becomes very thick,” Dabkey told Al-Monitor, “and there is this loud noise like an airplane. It sounds like the entire place is breaking.”

Numerous studies — the most recent conducted last year by Notre Dame University in Jounieh — have found that the combustion of fuel oil to generate electricity in the Zouk Mikael hydroelectric plant produces toxic emissions, including sulfur dioxide and carbon monoxide, that contribute to high rates of lung cancer and pulmonary and cardiovascular disease among local residents, in addition to asthma and skin irritations. Dabkey himself has asthma.

One 2010 survey, a result of 1,000 interviews conducted with Zouk residents, found that 33.1% of interviewees living within 3 kilometers (1.8 miles) of the plant recorded an incidence of lung cancer within the family, compared to 12.8% among families living 15-20 kilometers (9-12 miles) away.