Residents of the village of Stetskovka in Sumy Oblast have raised the alarm: since mid-August, work has begun to remove metal stored at an industrial waste landfill near the village. These actions threaten an environmental disaster, so residents have turned to the prosecutor's office and regional authorities for help. Are there any results, and who benefits?
The scandal in Stetskovka dates back to last year, when unknown individuals appeared at the site of a mothballed industrial waste dump and began digging up scrap metal with excavators. Considering that the dump, mothballed more than twenty years ago, contains metal barrels containing pesticides from the Sumy-based Khimprom plant, substances from an electron microscope factory that may have elevated radiation levels, and material from dispensaries, local residents began writing to all authorities and staging protests. Thanks to this, the "prospectors"' work was stopped.
However, metal extraction work resumed on August 9th of this year. Around 40 people diligently dug up ferrous and non-ferrous metals with a heavy excavator and loaded them into trucks. When concerned residents sought clarification, it was revealed that the work was being carried out legally, as there was an order from Vladimir Shulga, head of the Sumy Regional State Administration, dated July 30, 2014, and an agreement for the landfill's rehabilitation and reclamation with Dnipropetrovsk-based Irvigrad LLC, whose representative was present at the site.
The private company representative's conversation with the outraged community didn't pan out. On the contrary, a conflict ensued, with a complaint filed with law enforcement against a Stetskovka community activist alleging a death threat. The protest ultimately ended with the police being called and the equipment sealed until the circumstances were clarified. However, work resumed on August 14, with additional equipment and... State Security officers armed with machine guns.
Outraged by this turn of events, the village community turned to regional council deputy Boris Peresadko for assistance, who then sent his appeal to the prosecutor's office.
Seeing that the authorities were not responding to their appeals, on August 16, villagers blocked the Sumy-Kursk highway. That evening, Sumy Oblast Deputy Prosecutor Tatyana Mironenko and an employee of Irvigrad LLC arrived in the village. The prosecutor promised to conduct an investigation into the legality of the LLC's actions in excavating the landfill. A representative of the private contractor, in turn, signed a guarantee to suspend work at the landfill during the investigation.
However, work at the landfill resumed just two days later. At the end of last week, villagers were expecting Governor Shulga to arrive at the scene of the conflict to provide a clear explanation of what was happening, but he never showed up.
Only Tatyana Mironenko arrived in Stetskovka to report that the regional prosecutor's office had opened three criminal cases related to the conflict in the village, two of which were against the villagers themselves – for blocking the Sumy-Kursk road and the aforementioned death threat against an employee of Irvigrad LLC. Only the third case was opened, for illegal metal mining at a closed landfill.
Local activists indicate that the Stetskovka "garbage case" contains elements of fraud and obvious collusion between regional authorities and businessmen who, under the plausible pretext of reclaiming a mothballed landfill, want to reap their considerable profits in the form of tens of tons of removed metal.
The situation is further exacerbated by the fact that, as local activists discovered, the company "Irvigrad" was registered on March 25, 2014, and was put up for sale on May 28. The company's statutory capital is 4 hryvnias, but for its work, which requires millions in investment, it is expected to receive a whopping... 1 hryvnias.
These irrational circumstances prompted residents of Stetskivka to write a letter to Prosecutor General Vitaliy Yarema. It states, among other things, that "Irvigrad LLC, together with regional state administration officials led by the governor, is conducting illegal activities in the region under the cover of the prosecutor's office." The head of the Prosecutor General's Office has not yet responded to this letter.
However, Viktor Chernyavsky, First Deputy Head of the Sumy Regional State Administration, justified the choice of this particular firm by citing the fact that it had approached Governor Shulga and prepared a project plan at its own expense, which had passed an expert review and which the authorities did not have the funds for. "If we stop their work today, then by the fall, when the rains begin, and the wastewater from the landfill begins to flow, a new project will no longer be possible, and there is no money for it," the First Deputy Governor stated. The regional government representative was unable to explain why a commercial firm would be interested in carrying out work costing one thousand hryvnias.
This was done for him by Svoboda MP Igor Miroshnichenko, well known to Ukrainians for his visits to the capital's Klovsky Lyceum to demand that he be given the class registers where Petro Poroshenko's children study, as well as for the no less well-known story associated with the beating of the general director of the National Television and Radio Company of Ukraine, because the latter, in the nationalist's opinion, was broadcasting "Muscovite propaganda."
Specifically, he claimed that Irvigrad LLC is simply a shell company and that what's really at stake is pure business, not landfill reclamation. "After all, metal that was previously buried there is currently being mined there. And what kind of company is this? Where's the guarantee that they won't remove all the metal, then go bankrupt, and the landfill will remain dug up?" the deputy asks, perplexed.
Indeed, no one is providing such guarantees. Furthermore, it was discovered that Irvigrad does not even have the appropriate license to conduct any kind of metalworking. In this regard, the Prosecutor's Office has a number of questions for the Prosecutor General's Office:
— How soon will Prosecutor General Yarema respond to the collective appeal of the residents of the village of Stetskovka?
— Will an objective investigation be conducted into the actions of Sumy Regional State Administration officials and Governor Shulga personally, who entered into a dubious contract for the reclamation of the Irvigrad LLC landfill?
Should local residents expect a real suspension of work at the landfill during the law enforcement investigation?
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