Citymatic is trying to close the landfill in Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug from the public. Rosprirodnadzor and the government learned about hazardous waste in forests
Utility site operator ‘initiated administrative case’
Ecocommunity of Khanty-Mansiysk Autonomous Okrug has raised another problem of violation of environmental legislation by Citymatic-Yugra, the operator of the inter-municipal MSW landfill that receives waste from Nefteyugansk, Nefteyugansky District and Pyt-Yakh. In the next batch of messages, activists point out that “garbage brought to the communal site without any sorting and processing is unloaded immediately onto the map.” The result of this activity, apparently, was the pollution of adjacent land plots with waste. The monitoring participants confirm their conclusions with new frames from photo and video recording of work at the site. In addition, the “greens” are concerned that the 1.1 billion rubles invested in the project for the construction of a modern landfill turned out to be, apparently, unreasonable tariffs for the MSW management service for the residents of the region. Managers of the company do not agree with the position of the district ecologists. They insist that all checks were illegal and are apparently trying to “close the training ground for activists with administrative cases.” Meanwhile, industry representatives remind that the activities of Citymatic itself, which controls Citymatic-Yugra, as well as other companies affiliated with it, systematically provoke conflicts in other regions of Russia. In the meantime, the North Urals Interregional Department of Rosprirodnadzor and Yugra Governor Natalya Komarova have been informed about the polluted forests of the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug.
Citymatic-Yugra LLC intends to bring environmentalists to justice, who allegedly “illegally monitored the operation of the first inter-municipal MSW landfill in the Khanty-Mansiysk Autonomous Okrug.” According to the company, the regional public organization “Ecological Safety of Yugra” had no legitimate grounds for organizing inspections.
“All theses are solely conjectures of this organization. Citymatic-Yugra received no official requests to visit the site. Moreover, in violation of administrative law, filming of a waste sorting complex with a landfill was carried out from an unregistered unmanned aerial vehicle, which is a gross violation of the legislation of the Russian Federation. On this fact, an administrative case was initiated, and the materials were sent to the department of the Federal Air Transport Agency in Tyumen, ”the company said.
The reason for the operator’s dissatisfaction was the numerous new facts of a possible violation of the Federal Law published by public figures. As the activists assure, “contrary to the design requirements, municipal waste is placed without prior sorting, including waste prohibited by the order of the Russian government.” At the same time, according to eco-activists, “there is a systemic non-compliance with the requirements of the law, most of the violations were already recorded during inspections in April, May and early July of this year”
“Currently, garbage trucks unload MSW at the landfill, bypassing the waste sorting complex, they are buried without preliminary sorting, including waste prohibited for disposal: paper, cardboard, tires, PET. It is possible that there is also waste associated with the oil industry, which can be dangerous. In addition, there are no nets that catch garbage, as a result, the adjacent territory is polluted with waste. The situation is getting worse every month. The entire forest area near the landfill is littered. Why did the region invest several hundred million budget rubles so that everything would work the old fashioned way,” asks Anatoly Krista, head of the Yugra Environmental Safety NGO.
Recall that the concession agreement between the region and the company was concluded in December 2017. The volume of investments in the creation of facilities for the processing of MSW will amount to more than 1 billion rubles, of which 876 million are private investments, 224 million are the money of the district, provided for reimbursement of the capital costs of the concessionaire at the investment stage of the project. At the stage of signing the agreement, it was announced that the landfill would start operating in late 2019 – early 2020, but it was launched only in December 2022 due to the position of RTN.
The government of Yugra tried to recover about 25 million rubles of a penalty from Citymatic-Yugra for failure to meet the deadlines for fulfilling the concession agreement, but then refused the demands. After the start of the work of the facility, there were already complaints from the public.
However, environmentalists today are talking not only about possible violations of the law, but also, probably, illegal enrichment of the organization.
“The photo shows that there is nothing that should work according to the project. At the same time, payment for the operation of the landfill is included in the tariff at which residents of three territories: Pyt-Yakh, Nefteyugansk and the region pay for the service. The tariff includes the salaries of the operator’s employees, but on the site we see only one tractor driver who digs everything, ”they say in the Regional Public Organization.
The issue of environmental safety and fairness of the tariff policy, by the way, is relevant today for almost all organizations that are part of the Citymatic group of companies controlled by Sergey Kotlyarenko. Thus, regular problems with waste disposal forced the government of the Volgograd region to begin the procedure for depriving the company of the status of a regional operator for the treatment of MSW.
In the Chelyabinsk region, entrepreneurs and social activists say that the cost of garbage collection in Magnitogorsk is going through the roof. According to their assumptions, the colossal tariffs have developed, apparently due to artificially inflated parameters of the facility built for more than a billion. At the same time, the company, according to experts, “cannot cope with sorting waste, regularly demonstrating extremely low rates of recovery of recyclable materials and sending almost the entire volume to landfill.”
Public activists notified the environmental prosecutor’s office, Rosprirodnadzor and Yugra Governor Natalya Komarova about the situation at the inter-municipal test site. At the same time, the departments received repeated letters demanding to stop violating the Law in the field of waste management that threaten the life and health of citizens.
As it turned out, the activists are dissatisfied with both the reaction to the previous signals of the controllers and the curators of the MSW reform in the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug.
“For example, from the response of Deputy Governor Alexei Zabozlaev, we did not see what measures would be taken to correct the situation. The official tells us about the construction of the landfill, about the system for collecting and cleaning the leachate, about the amount of incoming MSW, but nothing about how, for example, they will deal with pollution of land near the landfill with waste,” they add hzikhidtidekrt social activists.
Today, the “greens” announced their readiness to visit the facility on a monthly basis with checks. Moreover, as they claim, the law does not prohibit them from conducting public environmental control – an activity prescribed in the charter of their organization.
