A meeting was held in Zaporizhzhia on the ecological situation in the city and the state of the atmospheric air under the chairmanship of the head of the regional state administration Oleksandr Starukh.
He noted that emissions into the atmosphere cause great indignation among residents, so it is necessary to speed up the solution to this problem, reports Zaporizhia Regional Military Administration (ZRMA)on Telegram.
The meeting was attended by representatives of the Department of Environmental Protection, the Department of Environmental Safety of the City Council, the State Production and Consumer Service, the city of Kremenchuk and other specialized institutions.
They discussed the issue of state monitoring in the field of air quality protection and management in the Zaporizhzhya zone. They also considered the changes in legislation that took place in 2022 and the experience of the Kremenchug City Council in dealing with the issue of air quality in their city.
The report noted that in July-August 2022, the air quality in Zaporizhzhia significantly deteriorated, especially in the Shevchenkiv district. Thus, the contact center received 1,286 appeals from citizens.
It was noted in the material that in the air of Zaporozhye every year there is an excess of the maximum allowable concentrations of the average annual values according to:
- nitrogen dioxide;
- phenol;
- formaldehyde.
The city environmental protection program, which provided for measures to reduce the volume of gross emissions, was completed in 2018 (validity period 2012-2018), and since 2019, a new environmental protection program has not been adopted at all.
However, the message emphasized that the city of Zaporizhia is a separate agglomeration, for which the appropriate Air Quality Monitoring Program was developed and approved by the Ministry of Environment in 2021.
"War does not cancel the right to breathe clean air. We heard the experience of Kremenchuk, where we worked for several years to resolve the air quality situation. Currently, our main need is to develop an effective plan for improving air quality in the city of Zaporizhia. It is clear that in the conditions of martial law, this is not a one-day process. Both scientists and enterprise ecologists should work on these issues. In addition, emissions into the atmosphere cause great indignation among our residents, so everyone should speed up the solution of this problem and work in harmony," Starukh emphasized.
The participants of the meeting identified the need to develop an appropriate regional environmental protection program. They also plan to take into account the experience of other Ukrainian cities and involve scientists and representatives of industrial enterprises in the development.
ZRMA should send proposals to the Zaporizhzhya City Council regarding the duration of each stage of the implementation of the relevant program and the necessary reduction of pollutant emissions at each stage.
Earlier, EcoPolitic wrote, that in Zaporizhzhia, eco-activists demand that the authorities find out the reasons for the increase in the dangerous fraction of PM 2.5 dust in the air and stop the catastrophic growth of pollution.
As EcoPolitic previously reported, in Zaporizhzhia, a fire in a shopping and entertainment center that arose as a result of rocket fire caused damage to the environment, in particular atmospheric air, for 192.9 thousand hryvnias.
