Life in the zone

Two years ago, residents of Metallostroy achieved the closure of an illegal crematorium for medical waste. However, his twin brother works safely and expands production - without public hearings and state environmental impact assessment

Clean air - on paper

From the industrial zone to residential buildings in some places it is only 300 meters. Smoke of all colors comes from its territory, the trees in the area turn black and lose their leaves. Of the 27.5 thousand metal workers assigned to the clinic, every 40th is registered for neoplasms (on average in St. Petersburg - every 50th).

There is no list of companies that are potentially dangerous for the village. The industrial zone is divided between large, medium and small owners. Plots and premises are rented out uncontrolled - to anyone and for any period. Often, on paper, a warehouse is listed, but in reality a company operates for the “renovation” of pipes or the production of plastics. No one is responsible for the fire safety of the zone, its landscaping or ecology; roads and passages are not listed in any documents and are not assigned to anyone. Here you can find warehouses of old household appliances, mercury lamps, construction waste and soil of unknown origin.

From 2010 to 2013, TechnoEco burned waste from medical institutions in the industrial zone without a license or approval. Flagrant violations were discussed at public hearings that the company held in connection with the planned expansion. Residents were outraged that such “beauty” was given to them by the Committee on Natural Resources, Environmental Protection and Environmental Safety. Officials not only spent 60 million budget rubles on the services of an illegal enterprise, but also used it as a base for a project to collect, transport and neutralize medical waste from throughout the city.

After the intervention of residents and the press, the plant was closed. But medical waste continues to flow into Metallostroy, now to another enterprise - Eco-Service LLC. The company has been operating in the village since 2009 and is engaged in the disposal of medical waste of all hazard classes - A, B, C and partly D (from biomaterials to expired medicines and syringes). At first, the plant did not attract attention, since all its “products” were burned in a small IU-32 stove with a capacity of 100 kg/hour. But in May 2014, Eco-Service received a license for the disposal of non-medical waste and another incinerator with a capacity of 350 kg/hour. To accusations of expanding production, the company responded that the new stove is being operated only as part of commissioning work and does not require an assessment of its impact on the environment.

No authority

Over the past two years, metal workers have inundated authorities responsible for monitoring compliance with environmental legislation with complaints, and even organized a collective flash mob “Send a letter to the President.” However, officials limit themselves to a visual inspection and checking documentation, and since enterprises are notified of their visit in advance, the pipes strangely do not smoke on the day of their visit to the site. No one has yet questioned the legality of industrial zone companies obtaining licenses, drafting maximum permissible emissions (MPE) of harmful substances into the atmosphere, or the results of the state environmental assessment.

And after the management of medical waste was transferred from Rosprirodnadzor to Rospotrebnadzor in 2014, the situation became even worse. According to Egor Leontiev, head of environmental projects of the public organization Green Front, Rospotrebnadzor does not know this specificity at all and does not have the necessary resources.

What about the Environmental Prosecutor's Office and the court? Cases of violations of environmental legislation go to court, but no one controls the implementation of its decisions. For example, based on the results of an inspection in 2014, the environmental prosecutor of St. Petersburg filed two lawsuits with the Kolpinsky District Court to suspend the activities of Eco-Service LLC until the identified violations were eliminated. The operation of the powerful incinerator was prohibited due to the lack of a draft maximum permissible limit and a permit for harmful emissions. However, the stove continued to smoke, as evidenced by numerous photographs and videos. Moreover, Eco-Service recently acquired another oven with greater productivity.

Where are the public hearings?

The Metallostroy industrial zone has the code TP5, which means that on its territory there may be waste incineration plants, pulp and paper industry facilities, snow melting stations, etc. But in accordance with Art. 31 of the Town Planning Code, if enterprises start working from scratch or expand their production, public hearings must be held.

However, enterprises are in no hurry to hold public discussions of their projects. During the hearings, information unfavorable for the company may emerge, and residents will begin to ask uncomfortable questions. Probably, this is the only way to explain the fact that Eco-Service LLC has not yet carried out such a mandatory event in connection with the installation of new incinerators on its territory. It is much more profitable to explain this by operating the equipment daily by commissioning work. Moreover, in this case, Rosprirodnadzor unexpectedly sided with Eco-Service, declaring in an official letter dated June 11, 2015 that on the territory of the enterprise in Metallostroy, medical waste is burned in the only stove IU-32: “The department does not have sufficient data that incineration is carried out at other installations.” A representative of Rosprirodnadzor explained: “Eco-Service” cannot expand its production and carry out waste disposal activities at other incineration plants without state environmental impact assessment and re-issuance of the received license. Until now, Eco-Service LLC has not applied to the department for renewal of its license.”

Iron logic: no appeal - no problem! At the same time, two weeks earlier (May 25, 2015), another federal body, Rospotrebnadzor, said in an official response that during the administrative investigation, “the fact that Eco-Service LLC operated two medical waste incineration plants in violation of sanitary and epidemiological legislation was established.” Which, in fact, was confirmed by the court, but did not lead to stopping the illegally operating equipment. And is it possible to “set up” equipment within 17 months? The explanation we received from a representative of the manufacturing company INCINER 8 International states that this model of incinerator can be prepared for use in just three days.

Self-checker

Interestingly, the draft standards for maximum permissible limits for harmful substances in the atmosphere for the IU-32 inciner, on the basis of which the enterprise received a license, were developed for Eco-Service by EkOnis LLC (director V. S. Nikolaeva), a company included in 3RGroup. And none of the inspection and control authorities were embarrassed that both companies were part of the same holding company. Here the question is for the Federal Antimonopoly Service - how legal is it to provide such services, where both customers and performers are their own. It is convenient for a company involved in the incineration of medical waste to have its own accredited environmental laboratory and a company that prepares project documentation in accordance with ELV standards. Moreover, when it is unlikely that anyone will check the data provided to Rosprirodnadzor. It turns out that an environmentally hazardous enterprise controls itself.

In response to our questions, the general director of the enterprise, A. B. Mokrousov, stated that all violations identified during the legal proceedings had been eliminated, that is, a draft maximum permissible limit had been developed and a permit for harmful emissions had been obtained taking into account all incinerators. Moreover, the MPE project for Eco-Service was again developed by EkOnis - and in this, according to Mokrousov, there is no problem. Answering the question of what emissions were taken into account and who carried out the measurements, the head of the enterprise referred to trade secrets. According to the general director, waste is actually brought to the Metallostroy site not only under Eco-Service contracts, but also from all other 3RGroup enterprises. Eco-Service works not only with state medical institutions, but also with commercial ones. In particular, its services are used by such large St. Petersburg medical networks as the Scandinavia clinic and the Helix laboratory.

“The disposal of medical waste in our city is a huge problem,” Mokrousov rightly complained. – Less than half of all clinics dispose of expired medications and used materials in a legal way. Many simply take waste to landfills, which is strictly prohibited. We are fulfilling an important social mission for St. Petersburg.”

As for the public hearings, which have been repeatedly promised and without which his plant cannot expand capacity, then, according to the manager, they are not obligatory at all. Since January 1, 2009, medical waste has allegedly been removed from the jurisdiction of the laws “On Industrial and Consumption Waste” and “On State Environmental Expertise,” which require hearings. At the moment, according to the management of Eco-Service, the management of medical waste is regulated only by SanPiN, and it does not contain a clear requirement for hearings. The Town Planning Code and the St. Petersburg Law “On Land Use and Development Rules,” which provide for public hearings for enterprises with a conditionally permitted type of land use (this includes waste incineration plants), are now not even referred to in Eco-Service.

The company does not consider its site in Metallostroy a capital construction project - it is “just” an area where several incinerators are installed. And the land does not belong to them - it is just leased. It turns out that any company can install as many stoves as they want on a rented site (even in the center of St. Petersburg!) and smoke around the clock. The main thing is not to call it a factory.

While we were digesting this idea, we asked the general director to show the stoves and, most importantly, the very device that shows that the combustion of medical waste occurs at a temperature of 1200 degrees (this mode guarantees minimal pollution of the exhaust gases). The device was not shown to us (apparently, this is also a trade secret), but, according to Mokrousov, in the stove at that time it was +850, and closer to the pipe (in the upper compartment) - “exactly 1200”.

MPC: we write two, six in our minds

We analyzed data for 2015 obtained at a mobile station on Zheleznodorozhnaya Street, on the border with the industrial zone. Unlike official reports published by the Committee for Natural Resources on a weekly basis, where almost never during the year you will find exceedances of the maximum permissible concentration for any indicator, in the daily printout everything is not so rosy.

Nitric oxide. According to doctors, it may cause mental illness or changes in the lungs. The standard was exceeded on February 25 and 26, March 5, 17 and 18 (on the 18th - almost twice!).

Nitrogen dioxide. At high concentrations it acts as an acute irritant and can lead to chronic pulmonary diseases. The standard in the village of Metallostroy was exceeded on February 19, March 5, 6, 10, 16–20, April 7, 22, May 22, 25.

Suspended PM10 particles are particles less than 10 microns in size that can penetrate deep into the human lungs and accumulate in them. Lead to disruption of the respiratory and circulatory systems. The average daily maximum concentration limit for PM10 was exceeded on March 17, 18, 19 (and on the 18th - almost three times!), May 21 and 26.

So why does the Committee for Natural Resources publish on its portal data of a completely different order - a certain “average” maximum permissible concentration for a week, without decoding and indicating units of measurement?

However, environmentalists also question these figures. “Monitoring stations and laboratories that win government contracts for atmospheric air research serve the interests of government agencies,” expressed the opinion of Yegor Leontyev from the Green Front association. “Even when residents smell a distinct odor of some kind of impurity and the chimneys of enterprises are smoking with all their might, these monitoring stations “catch nothing.”

When preparing the article, we asked several laboratories how much such studies cost. The minimum amount for the analysis of a standard set of pollutants for which the Environmental Management Committee carries out measurements is estimated at approximately 10 thousand rubles. Multiply this by the number of stations (there are one in every district, or even two at a time) and by the number of days in a year (the committee claims that monitoring is carried out every day). The minimum costs will be above 60 million rubles, while the 2015 budget allocated only 46 million for the provision of territorial environmental monitoring systems in St. Petersburg.

The question arises: are such measurements and their research really carried out every day and how conscientiously does all this happen? Or maybe on some days the stations do not work at all, and the data is displayed “on average for the hospital”?

“If the MPC is systematically exceeded, the city will have to take action, but there is no money for this,” say environmentalists.

In response to our request, the Environmental Management Committee explained the reason for the increase in the concentration of pollutants in Metallostroy as “elements of unfavorable weather conditions”, “a situation typical for large cities”, as well as the “heating season”.

Be that as it may, according to local environmental activists, the atmosphere of the village, located on the outskirts of an industrial zone, cannot be approached with standards common to the whole of St. Petersburg. In addition to the standard set of tests for pollutants, it is necessary to take measurements for dioxins - carcinogens released during the operation of waste incineration plants. Moreover, this must be done within three to four weeks. Only in this case is it possible to catch the substances that pollute the “crematorium” of Metallostroy at a time when it is problematic to organize one-time visits of laboratories to the village: for example, at night or early in the morning (according to the testimony of local residents, the pipes of “Eco-Service” smoke especially actively during these hours).

According to information received from the independent laboratory of ZAO TsIKV, which, at the request of residents, took measurements in the industrial zone, at a distance of five meters from medical waste incineration plants, the excess of dioxins was recorded more than twice (according to European standards). Since the maximum permissible concentration for these extremely dangerous substances that cause cancer, infertility and all kinds of mutations in Russia is higher than in Europe and the USA, almost 25 (!!!) times (in the Russian Federation, the content of dioxins in the atmospheric air is allowed within 0.5 pg/m3, in Norway and the USA - 0.02 pg/m3), Russian ecologists prefer to focus on foreign standards. The high concentration of dioxins in combination with suspended particles is especially dangerous - on the day the CIKV laboratory arrived in the village, the maximum permissible concentration for dirty dust in the industrial zone was exceeded six times.

Of course, such one-time measurements do not show the full picture of what is happening at the Metallostroy industrial site. After all, in addition to Eco-Service furnaces, there are other potentially dangerous enterprises operating here, for which independent environmental monitoring is required. And we need to start with an audit of the entire industrial zone, which is increasingly getting out of the control of the authorities, turning this outskirts of St. Petersburg into a depressed area, unsuitable for life.

The investigation was carried out with the support of SCOOP Russia - a project of the Danish Association of Investigative Journalists