ATHENS – The Fyli landfill where garbage from Greece’s Capital is dumped will be expanded again, this time by 12 hectares (29.65 acres), the same decision the body responsible for waste management (ESNDA) makes every time it reaches saturation.

The new expansion will only be enough to take in the city’s waste for eight to nine months at which point it’s expected the agency will expand it again, said Kathimerini.

Successive governments have said they’ll open new dumps but those plans have been derailed by opposition from residents where the landfills would be situated, one of the major obstacles for the country’s waste management projects over the years.

The European Union regularly threatens to fine Greece for violating bloc directives to find alternatives to landfills but almost nothing is ever done.

In Athens, with nearly four million inhabitants out of the country’s 11 million, only 13 percent of eligible waste is recycled, Phys.org reported.

In June 2014, nearly a decade after a prior conviction, Greece was ordered to pay a fine of nearly 15 million euros ($17.34 million) every six months over the continued operation of illegal landfills.