Residents of the village of Zhikhor, located in the Osnovyansk district of Kharkiv, are collecting signatures for a collective appeal to the Ministry of Environmental Protection and Natural Resources of Ukraine to protect 11 hectares of pine forest on the community's territory from being cut down for a sand quarry.
This was reported by the Hromada.Group media network.
They demand from the state authorities to understand the legality of the expansion of the sand quarry at the expense of the forest, which is part of the nature protection zone "Lower part of the Uda River Valley" and the Emerald Network of Europe.
Eco-activist Valery Lovchynovskyi says that the company Quarry Osnova LLC ordered the documents necessary to comply with the procedures in accordance with the law on the assessment of the impact on the natural environment, but they did not have the main thing – namely, information about what is on the site forest.
Activists claim that local residents were misled by the management of the quarry, operating with the concept of "plot", "while in fact it is about the lands of the forest fund, on which a healthy pine forest grows, the last large massif in Kharkiv, which performs an important ecological and recreational function ".
Photo: borova.gromada.group.
Valery Lovchynovsky recalls that because of this, the issue of the forest was not raised or discussed during public hearings. Therefore, the Ministry of Environment issued a positive conclusion to the quarry on planned activities.
On September 13, 2024, an announcement appeared on the website of the Kharkiv City Council that "Osnova Quarry" LLC intends to carry out the planned activity – "mineral extraction of the Osnovyansky sand deposit (site No. 2, pre-exploration sites of Site No. 2) , located on the southern outskirts of the city of Kharkiv" – and an assessment of its impact on the environment.
According to Valery Lovchynovskyi, the quarry has already entered into an agreement with the foresters, according to which the Zhovtnevy forest farm frees the area from the forest (~11 ha) and leases this area to the quarry until sand mining continues and the reclamation of the territory is not completed, and this 2033 year.
The activist claims that after the reclamation this area will no longer be a forest and during the works Osnovyan Lake will be expanded. In addition, the foresters have calculated, and the quarry has already managed to pay them the damage to the lands of the forest fund in the amount of approximately 8 million hryvnias.
In order to protect the forest from destruction, eco-activists started work on granting the territory near Osnovyansky Lake a nature protection status. Among the negative consequences of the expansion of the quarry, residents, in particular, mention the proximity to residential buildings and the disappearance of drinking water in wells.
"If the plans of Carrier Osnova LLC continue, we are ready to physically protect our forest from illegal felling and destruction of the natural environment," Kharkiv residents warn.
Earlier, EcoPolitic wrote, that in May of this year active residents of Zhikhory called the police and felling of trees was stopped at the site of the planned quarry expansion.
Also, EcoPolitic wrote about that activists of the Kyiv Ecological and Cultural Center won court case against the Cabinet of Ministers regarding the felling of the Markhaliv forest.
