"Our nature is not your trash"

“Austrian invaders of beavers and biks! Fuck you, not Russian land! ”, Stretches with such an inscription since November last year began to appear along the Yekaterinburg -Chelyabinsk highway. They are hung up by residents of the 20,000th Sysert and its environs, protesting against the construction near their houses of a huge garbage training ground or, as the local officials, "ecoclaster" call it.

According to the plan, Ecoclaster with an area of ​​154 hectares will be located 1 kilometer 115 meters from residential buildings. It will consist of a garbage plant capable of processing 700 thousand tons of waste per year, places for composting organic waste, sites for the production of garbage fuel, and also a landfill for storage of solid municipal waste. In the sanitary protection zone, a radius of 1 kilometer promises to create enterprises processing recyclables, to lay environmental trails, equip sports grounds and surround all this with trees.

The project called Yekaterinburg-South intends to implement the company Environmental Systems, related to the well-known entrepreneurs Alexei Bobrov and Artem Bikov in the Urals: they own garbage and neighboring regions in the Sverdlovsk region, musical processing enterprises and operators for waste export. Local residents, calling Bobrov and Bikov, are not mistaken: businessmen are really Austria citizens. In 2011, the prosecutor’s office in Vienna demanded to deprive them of citizenship, stating that it was allegedly received for bribes, the amount of which amounted to 900 thousand euros, but the court sided with businessmen.

Syserts, requiring the construction of a training ground, are also judged - and sometimes even successfully. And also - hold promotions on which they “bury” their villages, and demand from the regional election commission to hold a referendum. Officials, however, tell them: protests are useless.

Smola talks about the garbage conflict that has unfolded in the Urals, in which ordinary people, despite the opposition of the authorities and a big business, are trying to become winners.

"Ural Rublevka"

Syersky district is located south of the Sverdlovsk region. Due to local beauties-mountain chains and lakes, as well as the proximity to Yekaterinburg, to which there are half an hour driving a car-people with money like to settle in these places. And therefore these places are called the "Ural ruble." Although most of the inhabitants here are “indigenous”: people who have grown, grown and do not want to leave these places. Sysert and surroundings are favorably different from the entire Sverdlovsk region: there are no industrial enterprises, many suburban cottages and private residential buildings, tourism flourishes, and the quality of local soils allows the farm. The construction of the garbage training ground threatens to destroy this well -being overnight, especially in nearby villages: Andreevka, Shchelkun, Novoipatovo, Nikolsky and in the upper fight.

- Nature here is special. There are many animals, berries and mushrooms in the forests. They love to come with families here, relax on the weekend. And now suddenly there will be a landfill, ”says an activist and resident of Andreevka Alexei. - Imagine what will happen on the roads when they open the landfill. Hundreds of garbage trucks will drive around the clock. Traffic jams, roar day and night, dust flying to personal plots, garbage, which will inevitably get out of cars and accumulate on the roadsides.

Alexei is not cunning, the nature of the Sysert region is really rich, because only in the natural park “Bazhov places” dozens of species of red -black animals and plants live here.

Andreevka herself, in which Alexei lives, is a tiny village with a population of four dozen people. It is to Andreevka that the landfill will be located closest. On a bumpy country road, we reach the site intended for the placement of the "ecoclaster". This is a huge, leaving the horizon, an uneven field overgrown with grass and shrubs. W weeds, roe deer and hares come here.

- Local residents do not understand why in the Agrarian district, in the territory that could be used under farms, to arrange a landfill? Why here? - Alexei is indignant.

He speaks about the farm not by chance: in the neighboring village of Nikolskoye there is a farm on which cheeses, milk and cottage cheese are produced. After the plans for the construction of the garbage training ground, the farm did not extend the lease on lands used to grow fodder herbs for livestock: now this territory should be given to the company Bobrov and Bikov.

In a word, the owners appeared in Sysert, and these are not local residents.

"Bazhov turned over in the coffin"

Residents of the Sysert district immediately began to unite against the garbage training ground, as they learned about plans for its construction. At first they discussed this in the courtyards and social networks, then they created a whole movement that was called the "shield of the small homeland." The headquarters of the Shield is located in a two -story administrative building in the village of Shchelkun. The poster hangs on the wall: “Our nature is not your garbage!” On the plastic board above the table buttons, the general plan of the Sysert City District and the Blue Marker are attached to the email addresses of the “Shield” and deputies of the City Duma supporting the movement.

“We realized that we were going to build a training ground by comparing two facts,” says Elena Sergeyeva coordinator. -In March 2023, an article appeared in one of the media that the Yekaterinburg-South garbage training ground, which was planned to be built in the Berezovsky city district, was moving to Sysert district due to protests of local residents. And at the end of May, in our village of Nikolsky, the Ecodom was opened - the so -called educational site.

For the first time, the local residents turned to the mayor of Systri Niskovsky with a request to clarify the situation with the landfill last spring, during a traditional online reception. However, the head of the administration moved away from a direct answer. Then he was sent a written appeal, and at the same time sent out letters to other authorities: the deputy regional minister of the housing and communal services to Yegor Povalov, to the prosecutor’s office, to the governor’s administration. The officials replied that the site for the training ground was “not yet chosen”, and the territory for “similar objects” in the general plan of the Sysert district was “not provided”.

“But an unofficial way came to us by the Protocol of the meeting of March 14, 2023“ On the provision of a land plot in the Sysert City District to place an “ecoclaster” ”, chaired by the Minister of Office of the State Property Management of the Sverdlovsk Region Kuznetsov,” says Elena. - The meeting was attended by Niskovsky, and Swalls, and the director of the Frumkin Ecological Systems - all of them signed the protocol. The document indicated the cadastral number of the land in our area and it was said that this plot changes its purpose and moves from agricultural use to industrial. We began to study the information further and found out that our land is now intended for storage and garbage burial. On June 29, we came to a meeting of the Systemsky City Duma with this document and asked the head of the district: what does all this mean? He was indignant: “How did the document hit you? This is for official use. ” The deputies of the City Duma were in shock, they knew nothing. And then we realized that the landfill would definitely be.

Sysert was breaking.

Trying to draw attention to the problem, the locals began to hold rallies and protests in their villages, go to single pickets to Yekaterinburg to regional government buildings. The most large action was a picket in Sysert in October, organized by representatives of the regional Communist Party. More than 300 people took part in it.

Representatives of the authorities support the protest against the garbage training ground: deputies of the Systema city district Alexei Bondarev and Vladimir Matyushenko, as well as the State Duma deputy from the Sverdlovsk region Andrei Alshevsky. Bondarev and Matyushenko participate in the work of the initiative group, are taking the reception of citizens, and act at meetings of the Duma against the training ground.

In September, the Syserts visited Moscow - the presidential administration, where they transferred a petition from 3180 signatures against the construction of the training ground. After returning from the capital, they began to receive telephone calls with threats, and unknown to the school teacher Dmitry Kuznetsov defeated the glass of the car.

The Syurt Police on the incident with the car, as activists say, conducted a formal audit, suggesting the cause of the family-household conflict, and not Kuznetsov’s participation in protest against the landfill.

However, the local authorities, after the Sysertsev’s visit to Moscow, decided to talk to them. On October 5, in the village of Shchelkun, a meeting of residents with the head of the administration Dmitry Niskovsky took place. The villagers were worried about the possible pollution of groundwater after the construction of the landfill, the emergence of waste smell and the question of how much garbage is planned to be processed, and which - just dumped? But they did not receive new answers. When asked whether the head of the district supports the construction of a landfill, Niskovsky replied that he was "against a landfill, but for the construction of an ecoclaster."

Since mid -October, the authorities have not agreed on a single mass picket to activists. Then the opponents of the landfill began to go out to single. On December 1, a city dweller Sergey Kirillov came to the action in support of the residents of the Sysert district to the building of the Enembred in Yekaterinburg. He was detained by the police and wrote out a fine of 10 thousand rubles. The same shares were held by the governor’s residence. The protests and attempts to reach the dialogue with the authorities continued in 2024, but everything is unsuccessfully unsuccessful.

Activists of the Sysert district in their protest use the experience of other settlements facing the same problem.

“We read everything along Shies, contacted the activists of the village of Poltava and Krasnoufimsk, where the construction of the training grounds were stopped,” says Elena Sergeyeva.

- Residents of the Big Sedelnikovo, who managed to “defeat” their garbage training ground in 2019, however, did not communicate with us. We do not condemn them. Ordinary people who begin to fight corporations and officials supporting them go through real hell. And in case of victory, they just want to exhale and forget about everything that they went through.

Activists believe that they will not be able to reach a compromise with the beneficiaries of the garbage training ground.

- I moved here from Kazakhstan. I liked everything here at once. Cleanliness, nature, ”says Sergey, an activist in the form of an employee of the Ministry of Emergencies. “I lived here for five years and transported my five brothers and sisters here.” And then parents. My father had asthma, fainted, and the local air facilitated his illness. And the ulcer stopped bothering. Here you can even be treated with air. Now this is our house. And we will fight for him.

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On the other side

To fight the landfill to the residents of the Sysert district, it might be easier if only the Ural-Austrian businessmen and local officials stood behind it. However, behind it is a state program.

Ecoclaster in the Sysert district is part of the garbage reform , begun throughout the country in 2019. According to the plans of the Government of the Sverdlovsk Region, its construction should begin this year, and the opening should take place in 2027. At the presentation of the facility, the Minister of Housing and Public Utilities of the Sverdlovsk Region Nikolai Smirnov explained that the Sysert district was chosen:

• Due to the proximity to Yekaterinburg, this, according to the official, allows you to reduce the tariffs for waste removal;
• Due to the conformity of the place “all security measures”: here, according to Smirnov, it is possible to observe the required distance from the landfill to the nearest settlements and not pollute water bodies. True, for some reason, residents are not provided for residents.

The Governor of the Sverdlovsk Region Yevgeny Kuyvashev said this about the planned facility: “This is not a landfill and a landfill, this is an eco -component where the raw materials will be used again. Plots are selected for the installation of such a plant, including the site in Syserta. We cannot delay the situation. If we do not make a decision, then the garbage will have nowhere to carry. Wherever we build a training ground, people will always be outraged. ”

However, even without garbage reform, the enemy of the residents of Syserti would be serious. Alexey Bobrov and Artem Bikov in the 2010s actually monopolized the communal and energy business in the entire Ural region and in Western Siberia. Their companies, which are part of the STS Corporation, are engaged in the removal and processing of garbage in the Sverdlovsk, Tyumen, Kurgan regions, in the Khanty-Mansiysk and Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Districts.

Artem Bikov is the former director of Tyumenenergo OJSC, which is engaged in the supply of electricity to the population, Alexei Bobrov is his former deputy in this company. Businessmen have a scandalous reputation. In the Kurgan region and the Yamal -Nenets Autonomous Okrug, they were accused of unreasonable overestimation of electricity tariffs and garbage removal. And the garbage training grounds in Tyumen and Tobolsk, served by the Tyumen Ecological Association (included in the STS), fined Rosprirodnadzor for violations - including the filtrate arising from landfills.

The President of the Ecological Fund "Green Urals" Nikita Soloviev believes that the consequences of the construction of Ecoclaster in Sysert can become catastrophic for the region. Among the possible consequences-the destruction of the aquifer due to the tear of the pit under the landfill, the increase in the threat of fires on the peat of peat, the total pollution of the territory from the accumulation of garbage, the emergence of a large number of rodents. The ecologist and inconsistencies are worried about the construction of the facility.

“According to the documentation provided by“ environmental systems ”, about 780 thousand tons per year will be brought to the landfill, and only 3% will be dispersed and the rest will be processed,” says Solovyov. - But neither in Russia nor in the world there are no production that would allow us to process 97% of this volume of garbage.

Our organization requested technical documentation with representatives of “environmental systems”, they answered that it was not yet ready. It is strange to say that it will be an extra-class landfill and extracting extraction, when there are no technical solutions. There is no information about what equipment will be applied, what technologies to sort. ”

"Early rejoice"

At the beginning of March 2024, school teacher Dmitry Kuznetsov, who was defeated in December in the car, won the court of the regional Ministry of Housing and Public Utilities: he demanded to change the regional scheme of waste management, excluding the Systema training ground from it.

Victory was a surprise for the Syserts, but they react to her with restraint. Moreover, the ministry filed an appeal.

- There is a feeling that this was done under the election. In order not to produce discontent, ”says one of the activists. - Of course, we very much hope that the decision will stand in appeal, but we do not relax ahead of time, do not rejoice and do not begin to celebrate. Moreover, to approve the new scheme of waste management of the regional authorities, it is enough to only move the boundaries of the landfill a little.

According to the interlocutor of Smola, one of the main legal arguments against the construction of the training ground became a public hearing in the Sysert district in November 2023 to amend the general plan. Then 92% of the participants in the hearings spoke out against the adoption of the general plan of the district, which provided for the placement of the “ecoclaster”: “for” 155 people voted, “against” - 1822.

-But this does not prevent the authorities from proposing a new general plan with the same landfill, only in another place, and try to hold public hearings quietly. Or even just do not let the opponents of construction on them, says one of the activists.

In indirectly, the hypothesis of residents also confirms the fact that on March 20 the territorial election commission refused them to conduct a referendum against the landfill - although a few hours before, the court ordered it to register the initiative group on holding a referendum. “We will not surrender to ensure the situation and corporate interests of several not poor people, we will not allow our homeland to turn our homeland into the trash. Representatives of the "Shield of the Small Motherland" in social networks reacted . In anticipation of the appeal, they continue to go to the pickets to the residence of the governor.