The company "Dnipro Project and Research Institute", the developer of the environmental impact assessment (EIA) for the object: "Overhaul of the improvement elements of the Obolonsky island in the Obolonskyi district of Kyiv", falsified the necessary studies, and the Department of Ecology of the Kyiv City State Administration deliberately turned a blind eye to it.
This opinion was expressed by Georgy Mohylnyi, an analyst of the public initiative "Holka", in his material.
First of all, he noted that numerous violations on Obolonsky could have been avoided if the Ministry of Environment had not closed access to the Unified Register of Environmental Impact Assessment online. The analyst stated that because of this, the public lost the opportunity to detect cases of non-compliance with the requirements of the law.
Specifically, with regard to Obolonsky Island in Kyiv, which has been an object of a nature reserve fund for 20 years – part of the regional landscape park (RLP) "Dnipro Islands", Mohylnyi named the following violations:
1. Due to the beginning of the large-scale invasion of Russia, the public discussion, which began 2 weeks before and which officially lasted almost until the end of March 2022, when the offensive of Russian troops on Kyiv was underway, turned into a fiction.
"The very next day after these "discussions" were completed, the Ministry of Ecology limited access to the register by order No. 159, completely closing public access and leaving it only to employees of authorized bodies responsible for providing conclusions on environmental impact assessment," says the analyst.
2. Construction on Obolonsky Island is prohibited without the development and approval of the Project for the organization of the territory of the Dnipro Islands RLP.
Heorhiy Mohylnyi says that such a project should have been developed by KP "Pleso", but it did not do so. Incidentally, he notes that the Department of Ecology and Natural Resources of the KMDA required the utility company to do this, but until Vitaliy Klitschko changed its head, he appointed Oleksandr Vozny, who still heads it, as the head of this division. Since then, the position of the Office has changed.
3. The report contains false information about the greening of the island – 25% instead of 100%.
"If an amusement park appears here, the area of the island's landscaping, which belongs to the nature reserve fund, should decrease by almost 2 times. For this, it is enough to look at the construction project. However, the falsified report convinces that the exact opposite is happening — it seems that "full preservation of existing trees" and "maximum preservation of the existing plant cover" are foreseen, the analyst says.
He claims that the Department of Ecology of the KMDA did not see this obvious manipulation and simply copied the description from the report into their conclusion, which directly contradicts the planned works, although they should have checked the conclusion for compliance with the law. Therefore, the analyst suggests two possible explanations: either the conclusion was issued and inaccurate information was copied from the report without verification, or they knew about the violation and simply turned a blind eye to it.
4. Biodiversity research was not conducted.
According to Mohylny, the only research that has been conducted is a quantitative analysis of phytoplankton samples in the water near the island. And as the results of research on the vegetation of Obolonsky, they published a description of a completely different island, which is administratively located not even in Obolonsky, but in the Desnyansky district of Kyiv.
As EcoPolitic previously reported, Obolons Island has always been the object of increased attention. Yes, in August 2022 employees of NABU, SAP and KMDA prevented them illegal alienation into private property of Obolonsky Island with an area of 147.7 thousand square meters. m.
At the beginning of June, we reported that KEKC ecologists discovered destruction on Obolonsky Island of one of the largest populations of red-listed plants in the capital – Siberian cockles. A few days later, EcoPolitics informed about what is happening on Obolonsky Island illegally demolished about 200 old trees and about 1000 bushes and planted young trees instead. In addition to green spaces, during the reconstruction, the builders destroyed the habitats of red-listed animals and completely destroyed the soil layer on an area of about 14 hectares.
In July, the Obolon district prosecutor's office of the city of Kyiv, following an appeal by the KEKC opened criminal proceedings on the fact of mass destruction of nature on Obolonsky Island in Kyiv.
