Ecologists demanded performing a government environmental-impact review of the land reclamation at station Shies

Ecologists from the Save Pechora Committee Non-Governmental Organization asked the Federal Service for Supervision of Natural Resource Usage to perform a government environmental-impact review of the reclamation of the territory at station Shies on the border of Arkhangelsk Oblast and the Komi Republic, where the Technopark Company planned to build a landfill. Ivan Ivanov, the head of the Committee, reported this to 7x7.

According to him, despite the fact that Alexander Tsybulsky, the head of Arkhangelsk Oblast, and Vladimir Uyba, the head of the Komi Republic, announced the reclamation of a land plot near station Shies with an area of 15 hectares since spring, nothing significant is happening there. The lack of the project's government review might be one of the reasons for it, says Ivanov.

Ecologists indicated in the appeal of the Save Pechora Committee to the Federal Service for Supervision of Natural Resource Usage (is at 7x7’s disposal) that eco-activists had recorded the storage of industrial and household waste at the site since August 2018. In particular, the construction site was excavated to a depth of 3 m; clean felling of the forest, part of which was stolen (a criminal case is being investigated), was conducted there; the site was partially polluted with liquid household waste, fuel and lubricants, and livestock waste products.

The Save Pechora Committee asks the Federal Service for Supervision of Natural Resource Usage to check the facts of waste storage as well as to ask for information on the appeals and responses in the Arkhangelsk offices of the Federal Service for Supervision of Natural Resource Usage and the Ministry of Natural Resources from July 2018 to the present, to stop illegal reclamation of the land plot, to bring those responsible to justice including the officials of the Ministry of Natural Resources of Arkhangelsk Oblast, if abuse of office or any other violations are found in their actions when approving the reclamation project.

Ivan Ivanov told 7x7 that terms and actions for the reclamation of the site on the planned Shies Landfill’s territory were “absolutely unreasonable”. He brought into focus the fact that officials had been reporting some kind of change from there since spring, but everything was actually limited only to «formal actions»:

— Any phenomenon has its essence, and in this case, the review is required by law — it still remains, although it was emasculated to "I cannot do it". I believe that there is every ground to perform a government environmental-impact review. It includes, among other things, an environmental impact assessment (EIA) procedure which implies public discussions, that is, people will be able to see the project, make comments, and they will have to be taken into account.

The construction of the landfill for Moscow waste import began at station Shies on the border of Arkhangelsk Oblast and the Komi Republic in the summer of 2018 without permits. Residents of the two regions regularly held protest actions, activists organized duties on the eco-watch (a tent camp near the construction site of the landfill). In December 2019, it became known that Moscow had not included Shies in its territorial waste management scheme for the next 10 years.

In April 2020, after Igor Orlov, the governor of Arkhangelsk Oblast and the proponent of the landfill project, resigned, Alexander Tsybulsky, the acting head of the region, opposed this idea and announced the beginning of the land reclamation at Shies. Activists confuted this information. In June, the government of Arkhangelsk Oblast announced that it had excluded the construction of landfill at Shies from the register of priority investment projects.

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