Splinters Fly

In Mahiliou, activists learned very strange facts about the Omsk Karbon enterprise and the free economic zone.

The activists of the campaign “For Healthy Mahiliou” found out that when preparing the project of the integrated sanitary protection zone of section #4 of the free economic zone “Mahiliou” (the Omsk Karbon Mahiliou, Kronospan, VMG Industry plants and others are located there) illegally included agricultural land, writes mspring.online. In total, 45% of the total “green zone” was illegally included.

Splinters fly

Eco-activists found this out from the prescription of the prosecutor of the Mahiliou region Chadziuk, which was sent to Chairman of the Mahiliou regional executive committee Leanid Zayats.

“Despite this violation, the Mahiliou Zonal Center for Hygiene and Epidemiology issued a positive sanitary and hygienic conclusion for the project, the prosecutor’s letter says.

One of the claims of the opponents of the factories was that industrialists cut down some of the green spaces. Chadziuk partially confirms this:

“During the period from 2016 to 2019, 40 cuttings were carried out in the immediate vicinity of plot #4 of the FEZ ... Thus, the area of the greened part of the sanitary protection zone was reduced,” the prosecutor states.

He noted that not enough activities were carried out for landscaping. Chadziuk said that the attempts to plant a new forest were not entirely successful - a significant part of the plants did not take root.

One of the points proposed by the prosecutor of the regional executive committee “to take comprehensive measures to ensure the greenery of the joint sanitary protection zone of section # 4 of the Mahiliou FEZ, to consider the prospects for more planted vegetation within its borders.”

Without method or analyzer

Environmentalists learned a couple of interesting facts from the letter of the Ministry of Health, which came to Mahiliou resident Leanid Platonenka.

- As it turns out, the method for determining black carbon in the air is still being registered in Belarus. The Belhydromet only recently received this technique from the Voyekov St. Petersburg Geophysical Observatory, said Andrei Badzilyou, coordinator of the campaign “For Healthy Mahiliou”. “Although it is obvious that it should have been received and used a long time ago, last year, when Omsk Karbon was launched.

From another letter - this time from the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environmental Protection - Badzilyoulearned that the monitoring system for atmospheric air, which they had already repeatedly promised to deliver on the border of the Mahiliou FEZ, is planned to be put into operation only in April 2020.

“Considering that the Omsk Karbon should literally start this autumn, it turns out that for six months the plant may not be worried about what the monitoring system will find there,” the eco-activist commented on the situation.

According to him, the tactics of constant communication with the authorities made it possible to learn a lot of interesting information, moreover, from the official answers:

“Now we just have to work further and do everything to minimize the potential damage from the industrial facilities in the area,” said Badzilyou.