Gdov deputies banned the import of waste from Pskov to their landfill

At an extraordinary session in May this year, 10 out of 14 rural parliamentarians entered into confrontation with the region.

Lyudmila Butuzova

The provincial authorities did not expect such a consolidated insolence from a tiny and deeply subsidized municipality. But it is not so easy to put the obstinators in their place - they are followed by the people, all 11,760 people living in the area, they do not need a dump. The residents informed Governor Vinogradov about this in an open letter. There is no answer, and this is now the most outrageous of all.

“The authorities, as always, are sure: they know better what people need”, - in a conversation with Novye Izvestia the surgeon of the Gdovsk regional hospital Samvel Khachatryan expressed his complaints to the official Pskov, - Hence the position: you sit there quietly, and we ourselves will do and decide everything for you. This is called an imposed service. But people have long been disgusted with their imposition and constant lies "for the good of the people".

I have been living here for 35 years, and for 35 years all the governors, all those who come to power, have suggested to me that there will be a new school in our district, with a swimming pool - nothing. Indoor gym - not visible for 35 years. Natural gas - for the 35th year they are pulling, already with their feet it was possible to trample a trench under the pipe so that it would reach Gdov. But here's how to fill us with rubbish - it was decided right away!

We do not believe a single word about the temporary nature of this decision. Our deputies fought back, and we will support them, even if they have to stand in front of the garbage trucks.

In fairness, not a single trash can from Pskov has yet come close to the Gdovsk dump. But another thing is also true: the problems of waste management in the Pskov region have not been solved for decades, all the actions of the regional authorities year after year were aimed at finding another victim, meekly substituting their territory for tons of dirty slops. With the start of the garbage reform, little has changed. Pskov met her with overcrowded landfills requiring immediate closure. They were closed under promises “just about, the other day” to launch a new technopark with sorting and processing. Technopark entered the approved territorial waste management scheme. But the launch was pushed back first to 2019, then to 2021. In the annual report to the Regional Assembly of Deputies, Governor Mikhail Vedernikov said that an ecotechnopark in the region will most likely appear by 2024. The speaker of the regional parliament, Alexander Kotov, expressed doubt that the rescue facility could appear even by 2025. The problem is the lack of documentation and the fact that those projects for the storage and processing of waste, which are proposed by the authorities, do not suit the population. As a result, what happened - on December 29, 2020, by order of the chairman of the committee for construction and housing and communal services, Sergey Grakhov, changes were made to the scheme - before the construction of the ecotechnopark is completed, the TKOs formed on the territory of the city of Pskov and the Pskov region should be placed at existing facilities in Porkhovsky, Ostrovsky, Gdovsky and Pechora districts. Residents of Gdov learned about this from the Internet.

"I have not seen this new scheme in my eyes. I don’t even know if it’s there or if it’s a show. But when I was summoned to the region and presented with a fact, my first reaction was - it was sabotage. What are you guys doing? We have a tiny area for storing waste, only 2.1 hectares, designed to receive 14 thousand cubic meters per year - a thousand for each inhabitant. According to the needs of the district, the landfill will be enough until 2040. They want us bring 40 tons from Pskov every day!", - the director of MGUP Gdovproekt Alexander Yekimov, who is also in charge of the municipal landfill of the district, told Novye Izvestia.

That is, in 2-3 years everything will be dirty - both the forest and Lake Peipsi, and we will not see the sky because of these Egyptian pyramids made of garbage. They don't listen. Who am I to them? Director of a small landfill, and they are like solving a state problem. They began to run into our head Yuri Pavlov. He, of course, is in a difficult situation - the region is subsidized, the economy is below the baseboard, you have to bow for every penny ... There is no reason to quarrel. But he is a strong and correct man - people have chosen, they are guided by them. The landfill is owned by the municipality - the region cannot just take it for itself. And Pskov has no arguments, what is the economic benefit to us from someone else's garbage? Only to finish off the area completely, so that the last inhabitants fled? In short, we stood like a rock against these plans. They returned home, and there is already an extraordinary session, the deputies - they are of all stripes - United Russia, the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, the Liberal Democratic Party, Yabloko - make a unanimous decision - not to let other people's garbage into the area. And no one listens to the "Edross" bosses specially sent from the region to pump up their members along the line of the party. They almost in the eyes say: what does politics have to do with when Lake Peipsi and the ecology of the entire region are under threat?

The deputies, it seems, are also correct. But Gdov is not an easy city either, with genes, as they say now, and for centuries it got problems that were far from local.

Gdovskiy district is located in the northern part of the Pskov region. Border territory with the Baltic States, area - 3.4 thousand sq. km (6.2% of the region's territory). The administrative center is the city of Gdov, population 3.5 thousand people. Located on the Gdovka River, about 2 km from its confluence with Lake Peipsi. The first mention of Gdov in the Pskov chronicles dates back to 1322, when the Livonian Order once again attacked the Russian lands near Lake Peipsi. A hundred years later, in 1431, a new fortress was laid on the Gdovka River and throughout all subsequent centuries it successfully repelled enemy raids. So people have experience, and life is such that there is always something to reflect. In any case, garbage is still a foe. ...The municipal training ground near the village of Bragino is located just 3.5 km from the coastal edge of Lake Peipsi - a real natural pearl of Russia and Europe. From our side, this pearl, according to the Ministry of Natural Resources, ranks first in terms of the annual production of lake fish, significantly ahead of Lake Ladoga and Lake Baikal. On the foreign side, there is less enthusiasm and more worries. EU experts warn: "The placement of huge masses of garbage on the shores of Lake Peipsi may become a time bomb that could lead to an environmental explosion not only of a regional, but also an international scale".

Frankly speaking, the garbage topic has already considerably spoiled the image of the area, scaring away tourists and potential investors. Ten years ago, the region became a member of the large-scale project “Economically and Environmentally Sustainable Region of Lake Peipsi”, which was funded within the framework of the cross-border cooperation program “Estonia - Latvia - Russia”. It was then that the Baltic side, taking care of the safety of the largest reservoir in Europe, allocated almost 40 million rubles for the construction of new treatment facilities. Another four million were added by the administration of the Pskov region. As usual, when free money falls on the local authorities, there is no need to wait for their effective use. According to this law of meanness in Gdova, a multimillion-dollar installation led not to cleaning, but to the pollution of Lake Peipsi, calling into question the development of ecotourism, which the residents very, very much hoped for.

The principle of operation of the treatment plant is quite simple: all sewage waste first enters the primary sedimentation tanks. From there, the water goes into the so-called aerotanks filled with special cleaning bacteria. A day later, the already clear water leaves the aeration tanks into the Gdovka River. The ceremonial launch of the sewage treatment plant was planned for autumn 2013. But then everyone was in for a surprise: it turned out that those very special bacteria did not take root in the district environment. The authorities then explained that the reason was low temperatures, and a year later, in November 2014, they launched the bacteria again. Surprisingly, they again refused to survive in Gdov temperatures.

In the meantime, the project had to be handed over. So they passed it! However, as the former chairman of the regional Assembly of Deputies Svetlana Grass says, the acceptance of the object was carried out with flagrant violations: "The district accepted the work on the reconstruction of sewage treatment plants without a commission, without the conclusions of the controlling authorities, only the administration carried out the acceptance, which was impossible." Later, the prosecutor's check found out, that, starting from August 2015, not just dirty water was discharged into the Gdovka river, but not purified at all, as a result of which the content of harmful substances in the river exceeded the norm by 100 (!) Times, and all this was straight to Lake Peipsi.

"After such news, our team of deputies decided to check what was wrong with these sewage treatment plants. We personally, out of our own pocket, paid for an independent examination, invited a specialist from St. Petersburg, who studied everything very carefully and delivered a verdict: the sewage treatment plants were built without regard to the project documentation, that is, they do not correspond to it in principle. They will never work as expected and will not be subject to reconstruction", - says the chairman of the peasant farm "Prometheus", doctor of agricultural sciences, deputy of the Gdovsky Assembly of Deputies Alexander Konashenkov.

Even before the unsuccessful launch of new sewage treatment plants, Konashenki, together with his team, proposed leaving the old facilities. But this proposal did not receive the approval of the United Russia deputies, who then constituted the majority in the regional parliament. And now there are no old sewage treatment plants, no new ones - none at all. Tens of millions of European donations go down the drain, turning into mud and an ecological disaster. This parting gift from the former district leaders Mironov and Razumnov, residents will have to disentangle themselves - that is, at the expense of taxes, pay for the construction of a new facility.

"The problem with Lake Peipsi will have to be solved in any case. We will look for money for treatment facilities all over the world - to go to the federal level or again to bow to Europe. Although it is difficult to imagine with what eyes we will look into the eyes of the Europeans, after the region has already "disposed of" their millions"m - with a heavy sigh after each word, the head Yuri Pavlov told Novye Izvestia.

"We have appealed to the regional authorities more than once, asked to provide all possible assistance, but in response we heard one thing - that the municipality itself must find money. Maybe it's for the better... The regional authorities, unwillingly, simply pushed the residents of Gdov to take control. The main thing is that people have matured to the understanding that without local self-government, problems will only accumulate and no one will solve them for us", - Konashenkov says.

In March 2017, on the initiative of deputies and active residents of Gdov, a criminal case was opened on the fact of pollution of the Gdovka River. The people were waiting for what would happen to those leaders who accepted non-working purification facilities and put their signatures. They got off with a slight fright - they received suspended sentences, but they did not manage to stay in their lured places - they simply were not chosen again, there was not a single vote "for" even in the most remote village. The district was headed by completely new people and entered the council of deputies. According to Konstantin Gorozhankin, the editor of the local public “Citizens of the Gdov Territory,” there were three fundamental things for which the people selected candidates - he does not steal, does not wipe his pants in an armchair, does not lie to people. With all the fantastic selection procedure, such ideal representatives now constitute the majority in the volost, village and district councils.

The head of the district was Yuri Pavlov, an agronomist, who had previously been elected head of the city three times. His keynote speech to the new voters was called "We have nowhere to retreat, we are talking about preserving the Gdovsk region". It still hangs on the administration website. On the sophisticated metropolitan nose, nothing special there, ordinary candidate spells - “... We will not let our area slide further. We will not step back a step. We have lost a lot in recent years, dozens of villages have been left without a local population at all, but what remains is for this we will fight, preserve and find opportunities for development. Large-scale industries will not come to us - we do not have either energy resources or human resources for them. Yes, we cannot find even a hundred workers now, if someone starts such an enterprise here, and migrant workers from Central Asia are taken to the region. No, we need small and very small industries in the places where people live. Ten jobs have appeared in the village - great! The main thing is that these should be jobs for local residents, there should be earnings not only for physically strong men (we also have one or two of them left), but also for women and for older people".

"Yes, that's how he works. Then they trampled all the villages with him, sat on all the benches with grandmothers. I have a longing: well, the darkness is how people live, desolation is impenetrable. And he: nothing, nothing, pour gravel on the path - it will be easier for the village, we will help to open a small business - they have the cleanest forest, mushrooms and berries under their feet, they will hand over, process, and this is a penny to hand ... And that's the main thing: gravel They will bring it not in a year or two, but tomorrow, and they will help with the business, and the water pump will be repaired. I have 7,711 subscribers in my public, all of Pavlov's voters. And he is also a subscriber. They communicate directly every day ...The effect is amazing - and the head sees what worries the residents the most, and people feel that their problems will not remain unanswered, they are solved, including with the help of the population itself. It turned out that it is not at all necessary to jerk the head or the deputy to clean up the village, mow the roadside or provide assistance to the storks who have suffered. They organize themselves, they themselves create volunteer organizations. They just understand in the same way that we all have nowhere to retreat, we are talking literally about preserving the Gdov region", - says Gorozhankin from St. Petersburg, who came to support Pavlov in the elections three years ago, and remained in these places.

Pskov sociologist Sergei Damberg, who at one time conducted a large-scale study of Pskov regional newspapers, highly appreciates the importance of the public "Citizens of the Gdovsk Territory" in the life of the district:

"Local media, especially in rural municipalities, is a key communicator that connects the local community, poorly organized, complexly structured or not at all structured, with the outside world and gives meaning to such concepts as local government, civil society, which have long and everywhere turned into simulacra. The institutes that sleep in most of Russia work in Gdov for some reason. Why? - Interactivity appears. You can communicate, you can speak - this is a fundamentally important thing. Social media is a democratic institution, much more important than elections: when everyone can write something publicly. He, of course, writes curses and nonsense, but this very opportunity, and the fact that it is really being realized and popular, is much more important than elections for the quality of life and for the quality of power.

Secondly, living experts appear, that is, the opinions of experts tied to this territory, and not some Moscow political observers, whom it is not clear who appointed observers, but who know everything about everything and speak a foreign language. And national news, of course. There is an opportunity for a person to say: "But we have this and that". And this is very important. This is a completely different series of events, which is not visible at the federal level and even at the regional level. Even at the municipal level, you have to somehow rise above yourself in order to see the municipality as a whole. And the regional public gives this optics to everyone. How many words have been released about building local communities. And here it is - a real living community, open and independent from anyone but the residents themselves, the people's square, the Gdov veche".

The urgent task of “Citizens of the Gdovsk Territory is to prevent the Pskov garbage dump from entering the area.

"If my readers had not raised a hysterics then, they would have been driving now. And now they will not be lucky. If there is no mind at all, then after the elections in Goduma, new attacks may be launched, because the problem with the Pskov garbage has not been resolved, there is nowhere to take it. But our people are really ready to go out with a pitchfork. Understand finally: we are not only defending our place when we shout "Where the Pskov garbage will not be!" We have a world reservoir - Lake Peipsi. It cannot be ruined for the sake of momentary tasks", - says Gorozhanko. A" village petition "with thousands of signatures was posted on the Internet, an appeal was sent to Putin with a request" to immediately intervene in the situation around the Gdov landfill to prevent possible grave environmental consequences and a social explosion". I don’t know if Putin will interfere ...It seems that Gdov will manage it himself. Should!"