Bird's license port

Holguin Canal and view of the southern part of the dam

A subsidiary of the Chekist fund intends to begin port construction at the site of waterfowl moorings

The city government adopted a resolution on the construction of the Bronka sea transshipment complex in Lomonosov (aka Oranienbaum). Phoenix LLC, part of the Forum holding company (a subsidiary of the ANO "Administration of the Affairs of the Regional Public Fund for Support of the FSB and SVR"), received three land plots for this construction - about 45 hectares.
Representatives of Phoenix and officials assure that this will increase the attractiveness of St. Petersburg in the shipping market. Local residents, ecologists and biologists are categorically against it. They seriously doubt the need for the port and believe that construction will have catastrophic consequences for the environment.

Menshikovsky Canal

Floating project
Not far from the place where the dam begins, a through passage through the Kronstadt - Holga Canal has just opened. All around is the territory of a fishing collective farm, but there have been no fish here for a long time - the dam has had a detrimental effect on the spawning grounds.
To the east is the abandoned Menshikov Canal, a monument of federal significance - but everything around it is extremely cluttered. All this, we note, is a protected landscape area. And along the coast there are the floodplains of the Kronstadt Colony, an integral part of the reserve designed according to the general plan, the protected natural area “Floodways of the Southern Coast of the Gulf of Finland”: four kilometers of reeds and swamps. A unique natural complex, which, firstly, cleans the adjacent land (all harmful substances carried by the sea are filtered through floodplains), and secondly, is one of the four remaining sites for migrating waterfowl in the Neva Bay. There is also the western part of Kotlin Island, the floodplains of Lisiy Nos and the mouth of the Krasnenkaya River, but they are about to be built up.
And now the Oranienbaum floodplains are also threatened with destruction: it is in their place that they want to build the Bronka port. In addition, construction of the Yantar port and the Baltimore military harbor is already planned to the east. The Bronka container terminal will occupy part of the land and extend almost a kilometer into the sea. The design height of the container warehouse is 15 meters with a solid wall. And also - loading equipment 30 meters high. As a result, both Greig's dacha and the adjacent sections of the Peterhof road will be closed by containers from the Bronka port, and to the west along the bay - by 30-meter buildings...
On May 13, 2008, the city government issued Resolution No. 559 on survey work and, “taking into account the request of Phoenix LLC,” allowed the survey “in order to determine the feasibility of designing and constructing a marine transshipment complex (MPC).” The area allocated for this - 41 hectares - included the village of Olgin Canal, a large part of the coast along with floodplains and the Dubki zone. In the future, it is planned to increase the territory of the port at the Holguin Canal by reclamation of more than 80 hectares. The throughput capacity of the first stage of the sea transshipment complex, which is planned to be built by 2013, will be 1.45 million TEU (equivalent to a 20-foot container) and 130 thousand units of roll-on cargo. The volume of private investment in the project will amount to 39 billion rubles. Another 16 billion rubles are planned to be raised from the federal budget for the construction of an approach canal and navigation aids.
On August 19, 2008, the KGA issued order No. 3173 on the preparation “by August 18, 2009” (remember this deadline!) of the planning and land surveying project for this territory. The developer is the Committee on Transport and Transit Policy of the St. Petersburg Administration. After this, according to Lomonosov municipal council deputy Mikhail Evdokimov, citizens became worried and began holding meetings and collecting signatures...


Walkers to the people and back
In August, representatives of the street committee of the Olgin Canal village told Evdokimov that the Phoenix company had approached them, wanting to hold some kind of “hearings” and tell them what their project was. At the same time, there was no preliminary notification, no exposition, for some reason the head of the presidium was the head of the construction and investment department of the Petrodvortsovy district administration, Alexey Popov (although the hearings were supposed to be chaired by the chairman of the street committee Anna Sokol), the presented schemes were without a single seal of approval...
And then unknown young people began walking around the houses of the village and, according to the chairman of the public organization “City of Oranienbaum” Vladimir Zhuravlev, offering ridiculous money for housing for residents of the village or unequal housing in Kipeni or Ropsha. In response to an appeal to Governor Valentina Matvienko, the Chairman of the KGA, Alexander Viktorov, replied that “in accordance with the functional purpose of this territory, the placement of a port complex on this site is possible.” True, he noted that “the existing low-rise residential development is not included within the boundaries of the designed MPC.” But he did not reassure everyone: citizens know very well how often the plans of the authorities change.
In September, a public discussion of the draft Land Use and Development Rules took place in Oranienbaum. Residents of the Olgina Canal, the city of Oranienbaum, the villages of Martyshkino and Mordvinovka collected more than 700 signatures and demanded not to transfer the zone of the village Zh1 (the territory of the existing security zone ZRZ 2-12) and the recreational zone P2 (the territory of the floodplains of the Olgina Canal and Dubki) to the port zone I4. All proposals, along with signatures, were transferred to the land use and development commission - where, apparently, they sank into oblivion. Nevertheless, it would seem that until the PZZ is adopted, there is nothing more to discuss at all - but as if it were not so: on November 24, public hearings were announced on the draft Temporary Regulations for the development of the specified territory.
“We visited the exhibition in the city House of Culture in advance,” says Evdokimov, “we looked at everything - we were categorically not satisfied with it. We turned to the head of the Petrodvorets administration, Valentina Shevchenko, with a request to postpone the hearings on the draft water protection zone for the Olga Canal until the time when the land protection zone is adopted and all or part of the residents’ demands and amendments are taken into account. But they didn’t move anything.”
At the hearings, representatives of the Petrodvorets administration and the KGA stated that there was no government resolution - neither Russian nor city - on the construction of the Bronka port and there was nothing to worry about, they say. And the representative of the Committee on Transport and Transit Policy - that the VRZ provides for the division of the territory into zones: production, warehouse, zone of urban highways, public and business development, railway transport and water transport facilities. And no more details.
“The head of the municipality, Alexander Mishutkin, who has always been in favor of any project proposed by the administration, spoke up,” says Mikhail Evdokimov, “and shook his papers: I’ll show you now, I have an environmental report! But there is actually no conclusion: what he showed was the terms of reference for conducting environmental impact assessment (EIA) studies and a preliminary EIA assessment. The assessment was made by Eco-Express-Service LLC - the same company did research on the reclamation project in the west of Vasilyevsky Island. The veterans he brought said that Lomonosov has no prospects of being a tourist center, tourists won’t come to us anyway, we need to develop as an industrial zone, earn money, and you, who don’t want a port, are hindering progress...”
On December 1, new hearings were announced: on the project of planning and land surveying of the territory (we remind you that the project was ordered to be prepared only by August of next year). This caused, to put it mildly, bewilderment among residents.
“The information stands were put up for public viewing not 10 days in advance, as expected, but in less than 6 days - on November 25,” says Vladimir Zhuravlev. “The public was able to see these stands only on Friday - three days before the hearings. But this is not the only violation: a planning and land surveying project can only be developed on the basis of the approved VRZ or the Land Use and Development Rules that have entered into force. We demanded to provide an order from the KGA on approval of the VRZ - Alexey Popov stated that he did not have such an order. We reminded him that before the hearings of the VRZ on the port of Bronka, residents demanded to postpone them - Popov said that I was disrupting the hearings, deprived me of my word and threatened: “Next time I will invite the police to take you out.”

Holguin channel

Rolled out "Neva Bay"
At the hearings, according to Zhuravlev, residents were strongly convinced that leaving the floodplains of the Olgin Canal and the Dubki Grove in this form was a crime, since it was a breeding ground for heavy metals and pollution. And since the coast is swampy and overgrown with reeds, it is very difficult for birds to nest here, they urgently need to be rid of the swamps and done like in Hamburg - so that swans swim in clean water next to cargo ships...
Well-known ornithologist, Doctor of Biological Sciences, professor at St. Petersburg State University and director of the Ladoga Ornithological Station of the Biological Research Institute of St. Petersburg State University Georgy Noskov considers such proposals, to put it mildly, dubious.
“The Neva Bay is an area of ​​shallow water where there is a lot of food,” he says. “It thaws about two weeks earlier than Lake Ladoga and the White Sea located to the east. More than 4 million waterfowl used to flock here, sitting and fattening themselves up to survive the migration. But over the past 50 years, there has been a deliberate destruction of this zone. It started with the creation of an alluvium in the 60s, the Volny Island was annexed to Vasilyevsky Island, and the shallow water zone adjacent to Krestovsky Island disappeared. Now there is an active reclamation of sand for the construction of port complexes and the WHSD. What does this mean? The turbidity rises and then settles, almost the entire area adjacent to the Neva delta is covered with silt, and the larvae of mollusks, crustaceans, and worms die. A “dead zone” is created. The eastern part of the Neva Bay is already dead, and there are three areas left that more or less serve as an “energy refueling” for birds. Now they can withstand a load of approximately 100 thousand birds. That is, the number has decreased hundreds of times! Birds begin to stay here longer and arrive at the site later. Their reproduction is delayed, and all late broods die. The population we are monitoring has been declining for the last 40 years! And birds cannot fly any other way, other than through the eastern part of the Gulf of Finland, because the Neva Bay is the easternmost part of the Baltic. They fly in and sit until they replenish supplies. We have long proposed giving Neva Bay a special status. And treat it in a civilized manner, as in Denmark and Holland, combining economic and environmental actions. We developed such a scheme and submitted it to both the city and regional governments. But now there are always some changes to the general plan and other urban planning documents, and in the meantime, more and more new protected natural areas are being reduced..."
“Only a person who doesn’t know Lomonosov can draw a port or a highway here (and it will be needed to remove containers),” says Mikhail Evdokimov. He looks from Moscow at the map and sees: emptiness. There’s a dam here, an empty shore here—why not build a port? But here there is a memorial cemetery - Malaya Piskarevka. A little further north there is a cemetery where many great representatives of the Russian fleet are buried, and the rector of St. Isaac's Cathedral is also buried here... Back in 2005, the Committee for Economic Development, Industrial Policy and Trade conducted research into the impact of future construction on the waters of the Gulf of Finland. Experts wrote: if two more ports are added to the existing load on the Gulf of Finland, then the water area simply cannot withstand it.”
“Why build a port where it is not needed,” asks Zhuravlev, “but, on the contrary, will cause damage to the state and its irreplaceable environmental resource? In developed countries, a deep place is chosen for the construction of a port on an empty shore, so as not to wash up dirty soil and not break through a canal. In Oranienbaum, it is necessary to deepen the bottom from 0.5–2 meters to 13 meters and build access roads that currently do not exist on the site of floodplains and palace and park estates. And in Bronka, most likely, the mud from the bottom of the bay will be pumped to another place, as was already done on Vasilievsky Island, which will irreversibly disrupt the life of the bay. Scientists say that if alluvium begins in Bronka, it will be an environmental disaster not only for St. Petersburg, but for the entire Baltic Sea. And there is a new port in Ust-Luga, which has unloaded only two container ships in two years. The St. Petersburg seaport is not fully loaded, and its efficiency can be significantly increased. So they need to be developed, especially given the crisis and the import-based nature of the economy, container transportation will decline.”
According to scientists, if the terminal is built in Bronka, the consequences for the environment will be catastrophic. Many species of fish will disappear, and mammals—the garden dormouse and the flying squirrel—will disappear. Mass death of passerines and changes in the migration routes of bird flocks will begin.
These consequences will be irreversible - but the authorities, apparently, are not going to listen to either scientists or residents.

Boris VISHNEVSKY,
Photo by the author