Eco-inspectors calculated more than 22 million hryvnias of environmental damages from the pollution of the Teteriv River in Zhytomyr by sewage.
In 2021, an emergency round-the-clock discharge of wastewater from a sewage pumping station for a week caused large-scale pollution of the river and plague of fish, the State Environmental Inspection reported on Facebook.
It is noted that the former director of the utility company was informed about the suspicion. After all, allowing such an accident violated the legislation in the field of environmental protection, in particular, a number of articles of the Water Code of Ukraine and the Law "On drinking water, drinking water supply and drainage".
The message emphasized that the Zhytomyr District Prosecutor's Office has initiated criminal proceedings under Part 2 of Art. 242 of the Criminal Code (violation of water protection rules, which caused pollution of surface waters, created a danger to the environment and led to a mass death of fish).
"Measures are currently being taken to compensate for the damage caused. The pre-trial investigation conducted by the Zhytomyr District Police Department is ongoing," the press service said.
Earlier, EcoPolitic wrote, that the accident at the main sewage pumping station in Zhytomyr, which pumps sewage to the filters, caused an ecological catastrophe of an all-Ukrainian scale.
As EcoPolitic previously reported, in Zhytomyr in April 2023, eco-inspectors found a high content of nitrogen, iron, chlorides and other pollutants in the Teteriv River near the village of Sloboda-Selets. Local residents noticed the likely discharge of sewage from the waters of the sewage network.