Grad on the garbage stands

The waste was stopped from Chelyabinsk: the cause of the collapse is the redistribution of the garbage market

For more than a week from Chelyabinsk, the waste of human life is not exported. Garbage does not fit into containers and spreads through the yards, attracting rats and exuding stench. Officials and public utilities recognize the problem, but they cannot solve it, blaming each other. Environmentalists are alarming, and a regime of increased danger has been introduced in the city. Desperate residents act as partisans: they set fire to the tanks and take garbage to the city hall. The correspondent of Novaya day spent a day among the Chelyabinsk garbage battles and found out to whom they are beneficial.

Background

It all started with good news. On September 10, the Governor of the Chelyabinsk Region Boris Dubrovsky announced the closure of the city landfill, which has been working since 1949 and which was planned to be closed under the Soviet Union. “Closing a landfill is a historical event. Such objects are not a place in modern millionaire cities. It generates 60 thousand tons of harmful substances per year, and this indicator is constantly growing, ”the governor said.

The Chelyabinsk landfill is a really dangerous object.

70 football fields of garbage with a height of about 40 meters. Constant decay and underground fires. Up to 30% of the total number of methane emissions, benzpiren and formaldehyde.

And all this is in the city.

As an alternative platform, the authorities chose the Poletaevo landfill 50 kilometers from Chelyabinsk. It would seem that a real step towards improving ecology in an industrial city.

But it only seemed.

A few days after the closing of the landfill, the Chelyabinsk residents began to notice that garbage was not exported from the yards. And by September 16, the phones of city and regional departments were torn: the townspeople called and demanded what was happening: garbage chips are clogged, containers too. Where to throw off the packages?

The city hall convened an emergency meeting at which they found out: the city of MUP “Gorekocenter” responsible for the export of garbage has lost almost all subcontractors. Those simply did not want to carry garbage at Poletaevo at the same prices - it is unprofitable.

The subcontractors accused the officials of the fact that they were informed of the closure of the city dump only the day before. And they presented the authorities with a counter requirement: to increase 4 times tariffs for garbage collection for the population. Officials could not go to this.

And while the conflict between the authorities and the “garbage” business is gaining momentum, Chelyabinsk slowly turns into a landfill.

Happy homeless Vladimir

The latest air in Chelyabinsk in the morning is at the station and along the highway. As soon as I turn into the yards on the Dovator (street at the station), a pungent smell of rot is in the nose. Garbage is mountains in containers and fragmentarily scattered along the sidewalks and playgrounds. Banana peel, diapers, cans.

A man of about fifty comes out of the entrance with a package in his hands. He approaches the mountain, throws his package up and removes with a quick step.

Immediately visible - the intellectual.

Either the case is the inhabitants of Stalevov Street! Last Friday, they became famous for setting fire to Bucky. The flame blazed five meters.

But it was Friday, evening. And now Monday, morning. On one of the container sites I find a beneficiary of the output of the festivities - a homeless person in appearance. He thoughtfully picks himself in garbage, folding herself in a checkered bag. Sports pants, an unbroken jar with home blanks, empty bottles, go there.

- Why, Volodka, expanse to you? - Behind me with a mocking look, the janitor walks. He goes to the homeless.

He smiles, begins to delve into a bag and, finally, pulls out an unfinished bottle with some green liquid from there.

- Look what they threw out! Liquor!

I dare to intervene.

-When will they start cleaning? - I ask the janitor.

- How do I know? - He is surprised. - I don't answer for garbage. My business is the leaves of revenge.

- Well, maybe what they say at work? You are a communalist.

- They say they say nothing. I am tired of it myself. This is like Volodka, it’s good now. And I'm not used to breathing with a rotten.

In neighboring courtyards - the same picture: crowded tanks, smell.

In some courtyards, the tanks are empty - they tried to help the muscles from Yekaterinburg, Magnitogorsk and Miass. But there are clearly not enough of them.

For 3.5 hours of morning walk, I pass about 15 kilometers in Chelyabinsk and everywhere I observe the same picture: garbage collapse. Garbage equalized new and old areas, making them equally unsightly.

"People are afraid for children"

Unsulchiness, however, is not the main trouble. The main thing is unsanitary conditions and rats that appeared in the city. The authorities even introduced in Chelyabinsk a regime of increased danger.

In the office of the environmental movement, Antimog, which accepts complaints of garbage failure, the hotline phone does not stop. “Dictate your address? How much garbage is not removed? Your appeal will be transferred to the prosecutor's office, ”the volunteers mint.

“We have been living in this mode since September 16,” says Irina Ignatenko, an employee of Antisodsk. - The Ministry of Ecology [Chelyabinsk Region] addressed us with a request to help collect complaints, because they themselves could no longer cope with the influx of calls. On the same day, people began to call us. Last Friday, we took 992 complaints to the Deputy Prosecutor General of the Urals Federal District Yuri Malinovsky.

Irina shows her working computer: Viber and WhatsApp “Antisomp” over the weekend were replenished with several hundred addresses with photographs of not exported garbage. Among them are a photo from the office of the Gorecocenter, responsible for the export of the organization. The office door of the office, the desperate townspeople had a dozen waste bags.

- It is especially important that container sites are often located next to kindergartens and schools. People are horrified. They are afraid that children get sick or that the rat will bite.

Irina says that on Sunday, passing along the Trinity Trakta, she felt the smell of burning garbage. “And indeed: then people began to call and complain that they had landfills. And the reason is that the garbage rots, releases gas. Any spark is all, a fire. ”

Not commenting

Having talked with ecologists, I go to the culprits of collapse - communal workers and officials. In responsible for the removal of garbage, MUP Gorekocenter meets me by spokesman Olga Sheveleva. Hearing what I want to talk about, answers: "I don’t even know if I can give comments." Then he goes to the leadership and comes out with the verdict: "We do not give comments."

The answer looks all the more strange that a few days before, Sheveleva explained to me the situation on the phone: “We take out the garbage, we just do it slowly. Due to the fact that the city landfill was closed, the shoulder of waste export increased. To get to the landfill in Poletaevo further than to the city dump, and because of this the schedule of garbage collection has changed. ”

What local authorities are doing to solve the problem, I am going to find out in the city environmental department. However, here: "No comment."

In the end, a member of the Public Council on Ecology under the governor of the Chelyabinsk region Vitaly Bezrukov agrees to talk on the phone.

“The Ministry of Ecology has a roadmap by solving the garbage problem,” he assures. - We are looking for new transport companies that will export garbage. And we find such companies. Now about 50 units of equipment are operating in the city. It is needed 80. According to our estimates, after 7-10 days the situation with garbage in the city will be returned to normal.

The shadow side

In the story of the Chelyabinsk garbage collapse, there are several silent moments. But they seem to be key. So, several interlocutors of Novaya at once said that there was a “shadow cash desk” in a closed city landfill.

- How is the process of garbage unloading. The garbage truck, when he calls on the landfill, should weigh. Then, by this weight, the cost of garbage unloading is determined. Payment for unloading is made. Cash documents are issued. But it was possible to do differently. If the unloading with the check cost, for example, 1000 rubles, then without a check was allowed to drive for 700 rubles. This is illegal. But in this way, a completely non -accountable cash register was formed. Over the year, its volume, according to preliminary data, amounted to about 300 million rubles. And this money was distributed in favor of a small number of people leading a city dump. So the entire collapse is due to loss of the feeder.

In the "Goracocenter" the accusations are rejected. “There was a video recording, and a program was installed that controlled all the cars. No one drove without a check, ”said Olga Sheveleva, press secretary.

One of the interlocutors recommended that most of the companies that previously exported garbage in Chelyabinsk are interconnected. And indeed: MUP Gorekocenter until September 24 of this year was headed by Igor Galichin, brother of the former Minister of Ecology of the Chelyabinsk Region Alexander Galichin. The wife of former minister Marina Galichin owns 50% of Ecospetsbaz, which was one of the subcontractors of Gorecocenter. Until 2009, Alexander Galichin himself owned part of the shares of another waste carrier - Titanic company. And, finally, the former deputy Galichin Sergey Meretsalov is also the director of the garbage carrier company Gorekocenter+LLC.

But the Galichin family can be considered "victims" in some ways. In 2019, they were supposed to replace the company Center for Communal Service. Before his appointment, the owner of this company was the governor of the Chelyabinsk region Boris Dubrovsky. It was sold only a year ago. It was not possible to quickly contact the Galicia for commentary.