Volokolamsk battle

Residents of the city near Moscow protect their children from a landfill and local authorities

Dozens of children were hospitalized on March 21 in Volokolamsk near Moscow with signs of poisoning. Locals immediately connected their poor health with emissions of landfill gas at the Yadrovo garbage training ground. For an unpleasant odor in the entire area, they complained for a year, before the presidential election in the city, large protest rallies were held. Mass poisoning of children led to the escalation of the conflict with the authorities and brought the problem to a new level - the crowd gathered at the spontaneous rally, stirred the governor of the Moscow Region Andrei Vorobyov and threw it with snowballs. The head of the district Yevgeny Gavrilov was received on the head.

The conflict in Volokolamsk began at the end of February, when many local residents felt severe malaise - headaches, suffocation, vomiting. No one had a doubt - the blame for the emissions of the landfill gas. The concentration of hydrogen sulfide exceeded the maximum permissible concentration of 2.5 times, nitrogen oxide doubles. On social networks, people published complaints and agreed on active actions. About five thousand people came to the action on March 3, as the organizers reported. They demanded to close the Yadrovo training ground, resigned the head of the district and a number of employees of the Ministry of Emergencies, who, according to protesters, provided fabricated air tests not exceeding the MPC.

The authorities of the Volokolamsk district in response to the mass rally established the emergency mode, but only within the boundaries of the landfill.

On March 10, people took to the streets again. Only then, the Governor of the Moscow Region Andrei Vorobyov promised to start the installation of the degassing system in “Yadrovo” two weeks later, but after 10 days the problem worsened as much as possible - new salvo emissions of hydrogen sulfide occurred, and children began to enter the hospital with poisoning.

“Serovodorod is a toxic substance of the third hazard class. It affects primarily the central nervous system. Fortunately, the dose is such that it is far from the deadly, ”says Vladimir Chuprov, head of the Greenpeace Energy Program Greenpeace. -

A particularly vulnerable group of citizens are bronchopodors, children, pregnant women, elderly. They may experience malaise with small doses. Nausea begins, fainting. ”

The Minister of Health of the Moscow Region Dmitry Markov first stated that poisoning was not related to the work of the landfill. The garbage training ground, as the cause of poisoning, was not considered by experts of Rospotrebnadzor, who claimed that during the study of atmospheric air, the excess of the norms of pollutants was not recorded. The same conclusion was reached in the Ministry of Emergencies.

Nevertheless, the hospitalization of schoolchildren again brought hundreds of local residents to the building of the Central District Hospital. Later, Governor Andrei Vorobyov, who was unkindly met by the crowd, arrived there. People shouted "shame!" And they demanded to introduce emergency mode in schools and kindergartens. Unable to pay attention to those present, the governor, accompanied by security, went to the hospital.

The head of the Volokolamsk district was less lucky Evgeny Gavrilov. Outraged citizens almost started a fight with him. Following to meet face to face with the crowd, the governor also had to (Gavrilov, meanwhile, was taken through the maternity ward). As a result, Andrei Vorobyov nevertheless promised to moth the training ground, but only partially: the old part will be reclaimed, next to which a new landfill section will appear.

Moreover, it will be possible to cover garbage waste by film no earlier than June 15. Until this moment, children are promised to send "to the places of rest."

A similar compromise is hardly satisfied with local residents. Immediately after the governor’s departure, they again began to block the road to “Yadrovo”.

“We will demand the resignation of the head of the Volokolamsk district,” says activist Artem Lyubimov. He admits that Vorobyov himself should be resigned, "but they still understand that no one will remove him."

It should be noted that in 2018, Andrei Vorobyov expires the term of office. On a single voting day, elections will be held in the region, and earlier he already stated that he plans to take part in them. “The situation in Volokolamsk is a challenge for Vorobyov in a very sensitive year of the governor’s elections,” said political analyst Mikhail Vinogradov. “Here, a lot will depend on the speed and adequacy of the reaction of the regional authorities and the ability to extinguish the sharp phase of the conflict.”

The Investigative Committee has already connected to the conflict around the landfill, which has begun verification in connection with the poisoning of children, presumably due to the release of hydrogen sulfide in Volokolamsk.

News about what happened reached the Kremlin. According to the press secretary of the Russian President Dmitry Peskov, the problem is being studied and so far to comment on the situation early. “The plans are very complex and cannot be resolved overnight,” he said.

The problem of dumps near Moscow first fell into the federal agenda during the direct line of Vladimir Putin on June 15. Then a resident of Balashikha, a broadcast, complained to the Kuchino training ground, the boundaries of which practically approached residential buildings. Residents of the Kuchinsky district and previously asked officials to resolve this issue, but the landfill continued to grow. But, having heard the mention of the Moscow Region during a direct line, Andrei Vorobyov went to the training ground on the same day and was forced to transfer the dates for the landfill from 2021 to the “near future”. The landfill, which had previously received a quarter of waste from all over Moscow, really closed, but the stench did not disappear. On social networks, residents of nearby areas still complain about the strong smell of landfill gas. Some offer to unite with activists from Volokolamsk and hold a large rally.

Over the past few months, protests against landfills have passed in several cities of the Moscow Region at once-in Kolomna, Klin, Naro-Fominsk, Voskresensk, whose residents are dissatisfied with the increase in the loads on training grounds previously used mainly for local needs.

Experts offer a possible systematic solution to the problem with garbage. First of all, you need to cut off the food, the organics that we produce every day in the form of straps and which for the most part falls on these landfills, explains Chuprov. “Moscow is a source of a million tons of food organics that enters Vorobyov. As a result, this turns into a bomb, which explodes, as it was already in Kuchino or Volokolamsk. You need to cut off this food. In Moscow, there is an infrastructure for this. You can install disposers - kitchen grinders of food waste that are placed in the shells in the kitchens. ”

The second technology that Moscow can apply is the cutting of the food at the stage of not apartments, but houses.

The authorities of Moscow propose to solve the problem differently - to build garbage processing plants. Such plans are already many years old. It is no easier to realize the plan than to close existing landfills, primarily due to the resistance of local residents. In particular, they abandoned the project in Orekhovo-Zuevsky district. The construction of the garbage plant is now planning in Naro-Fominsk, and citizens are afraid that combustion products will also poison air like a garbage training ground.

Such fears are quite justified, says Vladimir Chuprov. “They tell us“ let's not breathe with rotten eggs, but we will put you a garbage plant. ” It is dangerous primarily by furats and dioxins - this is the worst poison on Earth. His insidiousness is that he has no smell, like radiation.

When we are told that instead of hydrogen sulfide you will have dioxine cancer, the choice is very unethical. It is meanly from the authorities to put a population before such a choice. ”