Crimea came to Russia with tens of millions of tons of garbage
Simferopol, April 18 (Navigator, Astra Yazyka) – Crimea became part of the Russian Federation along with 53 million tons of waste accumulated in legal and spontaneous landfills.
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On the West Coast, the first tourists for the May holidays will be greeted by a smoking waste heap in a five-story building, on the South Coast - a 70-meter mountain of waste in Gaspra, threatening to slide onto the Yalta highway.
Every year 4 million tons of waste are accumulated in Crimea. All projects of the Crimean government and state programs for the construction of waste treatment plants remained on paper. But if paper can still be used as recyclable material, then the rest of the garbage awaits the promised recycling system for years.
The main solid waste landfill of the South Bank in Gaspra was closed back in 2008. Residents of the resort village have repeatedly protested against the burning landfill, which in the summer heat forced them to sit at home with the windows closed and wait for the evening breeze. The landfill was closed, a project for its reclamation was approved and the state budget asked for UAH 46,4 million for this. At the first stage, the waste heap was subject to terracing to extinguish internal fires, at the second, the entire territory of the landfill was fenced with a special structure with drainages, and the top layer was filled with fertile soil, and at the third stage, the landfill was turned into a forest zone. The entire complex of work was designed for 3-4 years.
However, in 2011, it turned out that the estimate for the reclamation project was outdated and almost the same amount of budget funds were needed to complete the work - UAH 35 million.
The Council of Ministers was going to provide money to the republican treasury in 2012, “taking into account the fact that this is the southern coast of Crimea,” and the towering waste heap, 70 meters high, interferes with the investment attractiveness of Gaspra. Miskhor and Koreiz.
As it turned out at the last meeting of the land commission of the now State Council of Crimea, the promise has been expected for the third year, and the solid waste landfill in Gaspra remains a potentially dangerous facility.
“We still have a debt there,” said Deputy Minister of Ecology of the Republic Igor Mikhailenko, without going into details. “It hasn’t been fully reclaimed.”
An artificial garbage mountain without reinforcement around the perimeter and covering with a special mesh can slide onto the Yalta-Sevastopol highway at any moment. A critical mass of garbage accumulated back in 2008, and with the start of preparations for the holiday season, trucks with construction waste appear within the landfill at night - transporting garbage from Yalta to Sevastopol or Alushta is very expensive. Now funds for the reclamation of the Gasprinskaya landfill will be requested from the federal budget, as well as for the construction and reconstruction of solid waste landfills in Alushta, Sudak, Dzhankoy and Nizhnegorsk.
It’s time for the residents of the Saki district to learn from the experience of protest actions from the Gasprin residents. The solid waste landfill next to the only waste sorting station in the entire Crimea has already grown 15 meters in height and is constantly burning. Deputy Valery Grinevich, who has several hotels in Pribrezhny with their own two-kilometer embankment, reported this with indignation.
“Clean up the landfill in the Lesnovsky village council. The villages are suffocating. It comes to the point of physical pressure on the Saki district state administration,” the parliamentarian admonished the Deputy Minister of Ecology. “As soon as the wind turns, it reaches a distance of 12 km to Pribrezhnoye.”
Grinevich is sure that it is no longer possible to reclaim the landfill and “it will be a monument for the rest of my life.” The deputy did not suggest where to take the garbage, but promised to give visiting federal officials a tour of the landfill.
“As soon as the Russians who will supervise the Saki region arrive, we will take them there. – Grinevich promised. “People will break loose, we won’t stop them later.” We have learned how to make revolutions.”
Over the past 10 years, the Crimean government has presented dozens of projects for the construction of waste processing plants at the expense of investors from Spain, Slovakia, Germany, and Austria. The last memorandum of intent was signed by the Council of Ministers in 201 with Sher Technologies (Virginia, USA) for the construction of 5 waste incineration plants, which did not become a real project, despite the fact that the land for the construction of the first plant was allocated in the suburbs of Simferopol.
Crimea came to Russia with tens of millions of tons of garbage.