Residents of Okhtyrka, Sumy region, complained about the discharge of allegedly untreated liquid waste from the Bohodukhiv meat processing plant into Ihnatenkove Lake.
The people appealed to the city council, the State Environmental Inspectorate, and the police, but received no help and are going to block the trucks' access to the lake with "hedgehogs" on their own, according to Suspilne.
Local residents said that, according to their observations, the lake has been polluted for several months. Trucks with 20-ton barrels arrive at the reservoir and dump maroon-red liquid into the reeds. Sometimes 12 such trucks arrive at the lake.
"A huge white truck like this arrives, and I'm overwhelmed by this unpleasant smell. It's been happening for two or three weeks now, and I've personally smelled it," said local resident Olga Kosareva.
The residents of Okhtyrka said they took pictures of some of the cars and turned to the police. Later, law enforcement officers responded to the appeal.
"The answer says: there are documents for the road, there is a waybill, there are no violations. Documents of the Bogodukhiv meat processing plant. We, as residents, are outraged: why doesn't Kharkiv and Bogodukhiv not process this meat waste? Why are we in Okhtyrk?" said local resident Lidia Blinova.
It is noted that the journalists turned to the Bogodukhiv meat processing plant with a request to clarify the situation, but did not receive an answer. And the city council declared that the issue of water pollution does not belong to the competence of local self-government bodies.
"The company providing this service is a private company. We have no right to interfere in his work. I don't have an official answer as to whether the company provided waste disposal services or not," said city mayor Pavlo Kuzmenko.
The wastewater treatment company said that it has a contract for processing liquid waste from the Bohodukhiv meat processing plant and works with it in accordance with environmental legislation.
"It is accepted in accordance with our standards, into the receiving tank where we transport all liquid waste by road, dump it there, and then it goes through a full cycle of our water treatment, the same as the city's wastewater," said Oleksandr Davydov, an engineer at Vodotorgprylad LLC.
It is noted that the residents of Okhtyrka appealed to the State Environmental Inspectorate, which found that the oxygen level in the lake was almost six times lower than normal. According to environmental inspectors, in 2022, Russian shelling damaged the Ihnatenkove wastewater treatment plant, which led to untreated wastewater entering the lake.
Earlier, EcoPolitic wrote, that in Volyn, the director of a meat processing plant from the Volodymyr district, who organized the discharge of waste from animal carcasses into a forest strip near the village of Ozyutychy, will be tried.
As EcoPolitic previously reported, in Kharkiv Oblast, in Zmiiv, sewage from sewage treatment plants in large quantities falls into the Mzha River, which is a tributary of the Siverskiy Dinets, which can provoke an ecological disaster.
