The garbage battle: a large landfill approaches Borodino field

There wasn’t such a thing on the Borodino field so that officials, led by the governor of the tank, pearled along the holy graves, clearing the way for the landfill.

Lyudmila Butuzova

But the fact is the fact: the Moscow regional court has been considering the lawsuit of citizens for invalidating the decision of the Moscow Region Government No. 378/19 dated 06/25/2019 on transferring Borodino lands from the security zone to the industrial zone for the construction of Europe’s largest waste processing complex.

The Khrabrovo landfill, thirteen years ago, starting with a small pile of waste behind the village of the same name, today spreads over 50 hectares in the conservation zone of the Borodino Field monument of world importance. Nearby - Yelnya, heroically restraining parts of the Nazi army group "Center"; a little further - the village of Artyomki, where in October 1941 there was the Headquarters of the Supreme High Command. The village of Khrabrovo itself was completely burned, it contains the mass grave of Soviet soldiers and thousands of burials of Russian heroes of the Patriotic War of 1812. One must have a special warehouse of brains and an unburdened conscience in order to turn this land into an ordinary trash.

The new landfill should accept 500 thousand tons of garbage per year. Already accepts - heavy trucks with a trailer go there every six minutes. The stench is unbearable, the dump expands every day. Now it is 416 meters from the long-suffering village of Khrabrovo and 546 meters from the village of Novovasilyevskoye, eight hundred meters is a zone of garden plots. Just a little more, and the garbage crawling on the houses and mass graves.

Novye Izvestia has repeatedly talked about the struggle of residents of 20 Borodino villages against a garbage invasion (See: “More terrible than Napoleon: Moscow garbage advances on the Borodino field” 09/28/2019, “And the authorities are silent: in the Borodino field security zone they expand the landfill” December 16, 2019, “The authorities were never able to agree with the villagers around the Khrabrovo landfill” on March 7, 2020)

Everything is like water...

Why is that?

The landfill is being constructed by Eco-Verda LLC, which is 50% owned by the Regional Operator of the Moscow Region, 25.17% by Andrei Shipelov, who is also the general director of RT-Invest, which is part of the Rostec state corporation Sergei Chemezov, and co-owner of RT-Invest Transport Systems LLC (manages the Platon heavy truck charge system in partnership with Igor Rotenberg).

Firstly, these are VIP investors with whom it is not customary to quarrel. Secondly, the garbage topic is now so sensitive for the “humanitarian” ministries and departments responsible for the environment and cultural heritage that the question is - who is more valuable to the mother of history? - it’s better not to ask them: either they will immediately tell a lie, or they will be “not in the know”. The regional Ministry of Culture, for example, “did not make out” the protection zones at the monument “Borodino Field”, although the territory of the state Borodino Military Historical Museum-Reserve, its protection zones and a special regime of detention were approved by a decision of the Council of Deputies back in May 1992 and marked on all maps , including the one that hangs in the minister’s office.

The Ministry of Ecology of the region turned a blind eye to the fact that the land plot taken under the trash is in the second zone of the sanitary protection zone of drinking water sources. Part of the Elenka river bed runs a few meters from the fetid heap, with the start of construction it is crushed by wheels and actually buried, and the river, by the way, flows into the Mozhaisk Reservoir, a strategically important source of drinking water for the capital. Nevertheless, specialists from the environmental design department “based on the results of a field survey” established that now this river flows beyond the borders of the designed complex. It seems that not only clerks, but also nature itself are in a hurry to serve VIP investors.

The Mozhaisk public claims that an environmentally hazardous garbage object was built without design documentation and without state expertise. Last fall, at a public hearing about this, there was a big scandal, people demanded documents, representatives of Eco-Verda and the regional administration in unison argued that the landfill was clean and safe, as soon as the examination was held, it would definitely confirm this.

And so it happened. Recently, the public control of the village of Khrabrovo received a response from the Ministry of Housing and Communal Services of the Moscow Region. It is reported that “the design documentation received a positive expert opinion from the Federal State Budgetary Institution“ Federal Scientific and Practical Center named after F.F. Erisman »Rospotrebnadzor No 19 Iskh-OI / 879-G dated 10/17/2019, as well as a positive sanitary and epidemiological opinion from the Office of the Federal Service for Supervision of Consumer Rights Protection and Human Well-Being in the Moscow Region No. 50.99.04.000.T.O12042. 12.19 from 12/05/2019. ". By that time, the landfill was already working hard and even managed to run into an administrative lawsuit for violating the requirements of the legislation on the protection of cultural heritage objects and non-compliance with the restrictions established within the protection zones.

On October 28, 2019, the lawsuit was successfully challenged by the Eco-Verda campaign in the Mozhaisk city court. Judge Kochergin, having examined the materials presented, did not find evidence of the alleged offense and, moreover, ruled that “The landfill is used legally. There are no objects of cultural heritage on these land plots, which follows from the answers of the Main Directorate of Cultural Heritage of the Moscow Region and is consistent with the actions of Eco-Verda LLC "to place the processing complex, to bring the property into proper condition and to minimize possible environmental damage".

Before the ink had dried out on the court decision, in February this year, upon the release of the filtrate from the body of the landfill, the inter-district environmental prosecutor's office of the Moscow Region issued Eco-Verda LLC a new presentation. This push-push can last forever, because both the City Court and the “state examination” that came to the court gave the garbage men a flag in their hands. Who now, besides the discouraged residents of Borodino villages, can doubt the legality of placing the complex on the reserved land, if experts on behalf of the state gave the go-ahead?

Yelena Yesina, a candidate of economic sciences, a forensic expert on ecology, a member of the National Chamber of forensic experts, doubted and made 3 sheets of comments on the submitted document - they are larger in volume than this fig leaf itself. In particular, notes Yesina, “there is no information about the river Yelenka, confirmed by a letter from the State Budgetary Institution for Water Management of the Moscow Region; no stock materials were studied on the graves of animal corpses infected with anthrax in 1940-1950. That is, the real possibility of opening such burials on the territory of the construction site and the infection of groundwater with anthrax bacilli. The source of water supply is imported water. The issue of fire fighting is problematic. ”Cherry on the "expertise" - Eco-Verda LLC guarantees the receipt of a positive conclusion from the Federal Service for Surveillance in Consumer Rights Protection and Human Welfare to reduce the sanitary protection zone to 546 m instead of the necessary and defined by the Sanitary regulations and standars 1000 m". The conclusion of an independent expert: there is a corruption component for several of the above signs.

This is also indicated by a very dubious deal to acquire land in the conservation area of the museum-reserve. In a petition addressed to the presidential administration, activist Maria Korshunova told about the history of the issue: “it was possible to place a Waste Recycling facility 18 km from the monument and human housing. However, after the owner of the Uvarovsky-1 state farm, the former deputy minister of the Moscow region construction complex, Proskurin Kirill Sergeyevich sold the land near the Khrabrovo landfill to Eco-verda LLC for 45 million, the above-mentioned organization decided to place the Waste recycling facility there, how it is more convenient for them to have a complex next to an existing training ground. That is, convenience and profit were higher than the interests of residents and higher respect for the famous monument of world significance. It was important for them to encroach on the sacred. It is important to show that there are no restrictions for officials and businessmen, because they are HOST of this country”, - the human rights activist concluded.

No one answered this petition, which gathered a cloud of votes from around the world. As well as an open letter from residents of Borodino villages to the President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin, the Minister of Culture Olga Lyubimova, the Prosecutor General of the Russian Federation Igor Krasnov and the CEO of Rostec Corporation Sergey Chemezov. For each of them, their own words were found explaining the meaning and significance of patriotism in the representation of ordinary people. And the request for all recipients is common - to stop the abuse of the memory of generations, to prevent the violation of the laws of the Russian Federation in a holy place for all Russians.

“Everyone backed up, we didn’t wait for help from anywhere”, said Mikhno Nadezhda Konstantinovna, a ninety-year-old resident of the village of Mitkovo. - I have been a member of the CPSU since August 1959, I have been working for 43 years, a veteran of labor, and I turned to my leader Zyuganov. Dear Gennady Andreyevich! All our written, oral appeals, meetings, gatherings with a request to close the Khrabrovo training ground, which has grown already above a five-story building, remain without attention. Responses to our appeals are sent to the administration, which itself gave permission for the construction of a landfill. Trash is being brought from Moscow, we are suffocated by the smells of decay, the liquid that flows from the landfill moves to the wells of residents, to the holy spring of the Kolotsk Assumption Monastery, surrounds the mass grave. How can this be allowed? We have relatives there, defenders of the fatherland ...In the courtyard is the 75th anniversary of the Victory. I asked Zyuganov, as a communist and patriot, to resolve the issue of closing the landfill. Did not answer. Let him come now, smell the "Russian spirit".

Nadezhda Konstantinovna is not the first to intervene for the land of her ancestors. In 2012, the head of the Mozhaisk municipal district was already trying to quietly push his own decree on the allocation of land for a landfill near the village of Mitkovo, one kilometer from the Khrabrovo training ground. Nadezhda Mikhno raised the public, put the ears of the deputies and the party organization, the matter went to court. The Arbitration Court of the Moscow Region declared the decision of the head invalid (case No. A41-41405 / 10). A huge role in resolving the issue was played by the proximity of the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Borodino - the Kremlin banned decorating the state holiday with a new trash.

Since then, much water has flowed... Political allies leave the battlefield one by one. Zhirinovsky’s son, in consolation, sent the inhabitants of Khrabrovo a sermon on the need for separate collection of garbage. Sergei Mironov promised to raise all Fair Russia with hostility, but only those who did not shine with re-election to the State Duma and for this reason were not afraid of a conflict with the governor of Moscow Region would vote for Borodino. "United Russia" - mouth shut! However, they gave the consent to the expansion of the landfill ... The management of the Borodino Field Museum-Reserve behaves rather strangely. On its VKontakte “Museum on the Sofa” page congratulated the Mozhaisk fighters on the ecologist’s day and received a courtesy from them: “The guardians of the sacred field, the fighters for its nature, woke up! And at this time we are upholstering the thresholds of the Moscow Regional Court, climbing the forest around the landfill in a dug up and polluted river, taking part in protests, attending round tables, etc., taking time off from work - and we do all this as part of the struggle for the security zone of the Borodino Museum-Reserve! And his administration didn’t hit a finger, as if this was happening outside their territory”.

However, the opportunity to fend off the landfill has not yet been lost. The human rights organization “The Princip” came to the rescue, in the Moscow Regional Court on behalf of the residents of the villages of Novovasilyevskoye, Burkovo, Pasilievo, Shokhovo, Svintsovo, Lopatino, Panino, Burtsevo, Bednyakovo, Vysokoe, Presnetsovo, Lipovka, Zakharovka, Sukonnikovo, Vishenkovo, Kolonetsovo, Tsukanovo, Solovyovka, Znamenka, Ryabinki, the working village of Uvarovka, Mitkovo, Kopytovo, Mokroy, an administrative lawsuit was filed to invalidate the resolution of the Government of the Moscow Region No. 378/19 of 06/25/2019 on the transfer of protected lands for the construction of Waste Recycling facility.

“We understood that it is useless to appeal to conscience”m says Dmitry Trunin, lawyer, head of the Princip organization. - Those who knowingly, with benefit for themselves, climbed onto the lands of the monument, simply do not have it. It is necessary, step by step, to challenge the violation of federal law in court, to prove arbitrariness and abuse of power by the government of the Moscow Region, which entailed the loss of federal property and the violation of human rights to a favorable environment.

It is a great success that the lawsuit is generally accepted for consideration. True, because of quarantine, they did not start reviewing it for three months, the first meeting was held in early June. In Khrabrovo, the gathering did not disperse all day — they were waiting for news from the court. Dmitry Trunin reported them:

- From our side, I and five residents of the Mozhaisk city district appeared. The defendant was brought to court by representatives of the regional government, the Main Directorate of Cultural Heritage, the Ministry of Ecology, the Ministry of Property and Eco-Verda LLC. A representative of the prosecutor's office was also present. From the good news. Judge Ershov granted our request to attach to the case file a response from the prosecutor's office of the Moscow Region, which stated that the vice-governor was given a presentation regarding the inadequate control over the regime of the security zone of the Borodino Museum-Reserve and compliance with environmental laws. The judge did this, despite the fact that all participants in the trial (except the plaintiffs) opposed it. However, due to the non-appearance of the representative of the Committee for Architecture and Urban Planning of the region and at the request of other participants in the process, the court session itself was postponed until July 2. According to the apt remark of one of the residents, not a dozen tons of garbage will be piled up to us during this time, but alas ... They motivated this by saying that it’s necessary to familiarize themselves with the essence of the lawsuit, to formulate a written position — Eco-Verda LLC made such a request " And the regional government doubted that the land plots transferred for the landfill are in the protective zone of the museum-reserve, although this is even stated in the project documentation for the object .. Let's hope that by the next meeting the defendants will stop evading and justice will be restored.

The people sighed and went to scoop up the dirt inherited by the village from an unexpected investor. Routine subbotnik doomed. But here is how activist Svetlana Kaparina agitates neighbors - “If we don’t get together in order to defend Borodino and the future of our children, no one will do it!”