For several years now, residents of Kharkiv have been campaigning to preserve the woodland in the Zhikhor neighbourhood near Osnovyanskyi Lake. According to locals, the recreational area is gradually being ‘eaten away’ by sand-mining operations. To protect this green space, residents are calling for the creation of a nature reserve. Scientists recently presented a proposal for this.
This was reported by the non-governmental organisation ‘The Guardians’.
There are plans to establish the ‘Osnovyansky’ Landscape Reserve within the Zhikhor Forest. The project was drawn up by the NGO ‘Guardians’ in collaboration with academics from V.N. Karazin Kharkiv National University. Tetyana Atemassova, an associate professor at the Faculty of Biology, presented her vision for the future nature reserve.
Source: ‘The Guardians’ NGO
According to information from the NGO ‘Guardians’, representatives of the Kharkiv Regional Military Administration, the city and district authorities, the forestry service and the company posing a threat to the forest, ‘Kar’yer Osnova’ Ltd, were invited to the event. None of them turned up. The officials cited their participation in events marking Kharkiv Day and Independence Day.
Next steps
Civil society activists point out that, in their response to the invitation, representatives of the local authority emphasised the importance of the initiative to establish a nature reserve. Consequently, the forest conservationists wish to discuss its future once again. To this end, they plan to hold a round-table discussion as early as September.
"We are proposing an open dialogue between the authorities, academics, relevant organisations, land users and the local community. We want ‘Osnovyansky’ to become not just a project, but a fully-fledged nature reserve that will preserve the Zhikhor Forest, Lake Osnovyanske and the surrounding natural areas for the community,” the organisation emphasised.
Government bodies fail to recognise the problem; businesses are taking activists to court
As previously reported by EcoPolitics, sand extraction in Osnovyanskyi Lake is carried out by the companies “Kar’yer-Osnova” and “Reysis Ukraine”. The Zhykhor Forest is effectively under the jurisdiction of the state-owned enterprise ‘Forests of Ukraine’, but under an easement agreement, the state-owned enterprise has allocated 11.2 hectares of land to the sand extractors.
And whilst the authorities remain oblivious to the threat, local residents are documenting the death of trees. They say that the slopes are being undermined, sand is being removed, and trees are falling. A separate issue is the area’s water balance. According to ecologist Valerii Lovchynskyi, the lake acts as a drainage basin. Its deepening due to sand extraction could lower the groundwater level by as much as 1.5 metres.
Source: facebook.com/nas.lis.881725
The public outcry led to an inspection of the activities of ‘Kar’yer Osnova’ Ltd by the State Environmental Inspectorate. However, the Inspectorate found no breaches. The NGO ‘Guardians’ noted in the authority’s response that it had, in fact, checked only the existence of documents — the environmental impact assessment report, the special permit for subsoil use, and the land easement. However, the environmental inspectors simply failed to take note of the connection between these documents.
According to the campaigners, the EIA report has absolutely no bearing on the activities carried out by the company under special permit No. 6672. Consequently, there is simply no information regarding a land reclamation project or the removal of the topsoil. At the same time, it is unclear from the response whether the State Environmental Inspection checked whether the soil had been preserved and whether the company had adhered to the boundaries of the land allocation.
A separate question is whether, once the sand has been extracted, there will be any land left at all, rather than just an expanded lake.
Businesses do not take kindly to public opposition. Following public statements regarding sand extraction in the ‘Kar’yer Osnova’ recreational area, the company took legal action against Svitlana Kuraksina, the chair of the ‘Guardians’ civil society organisation. The company is demanding that the information she disclosed in a report by the Kharkiv Anti-Corruption Centre be declared inaccurate.
"This is not an attack on her reputation. It is public scrutiny and the exercise of people’s constitutional right to a safe environment," commented the head of the NGO.
EcoPolitic previously reported that ‘Kar’yer Osnova’ LLC, a subsidiary of ‘Reysis’, had already attempted twice to legalise the expansion of its sand extraction operations. The first time, its application for an environmental impact assessment was rejected.
