Eco-activists demand that the President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyi, instruct the government to develop and implement a program for the preservation of small rivers, in particular the Ros River.
The corresponding petition, registered on the website of the President of Ukraine, has already received more than 26,000 votes out of the required 25,000.
Eco-activist Oleg Sobchenko, who recently died at the front, actively fought for the protection of the Ros River.
In the petition, it was emphasized that most of the rivers of Ukraine are in a catastrophic state due to anthropogenic load and ignoring environmental regulations. Fish are increasingly dying en masse in rivers, and people are forbidden to swim. Ecological threats are already on the verge of irreversible.
" The Ros River is perhaps the most representative of the catastrophic combination of all the pressing problems of such water bodies," the author of the petition, Vladlen Kovtun, emphasized.
He said that Ros supplies water to about 500,000 residents of Bila Tserkva, Uman, Korsun-Shevchenkivskyi, Bohuslav, other cities, several hundred villages and towns, and the work of about 3,000 industrial, agricultural and fisheries enterprises. Its pool is located on the territory of four regions - Vinnytsia, Zhytomyr, Kyiv and Cherkasy. More than 2,000 ponds and 13 small hydroelectric power stations have been built on the river.
Kovtun emphasized that, according to scientists' forecasts, the river will soon be so polluted that it will be impossible to use its water. This will lead to huge costs for establishing a new water supply system for the entire region.
In the petition, Zelenskyi is asked to instruct the Cabinet of Ministers to ensure the development, adoption and proper implementation of a public-private partnership state program for the preservation of the Ros River and sustainable development in its basin. The program should include:
- restoring the water level of the river;
- scientifically based regulation of the hydrological regime;
- determination and placement in nature of coastal protective strips;
- additional afforestation of the water protection zone;
- acceleration of eco-network formation;
- cleaning and arrangement of water intakes, hydroelectric plants, pond system;
- preservation of tributaries and sources feeding the river;
- the development of recreation areas primarily for the needs of local residents and the restoration of the region as a tourist destination.
"Implementation of such a state program should become an important component of proper preparation for the celebration in 2032 of the 1,000th anniversary of the glorious cities of Bila Tserkva, Korsun-Shevchenkivskyi, and Boguslav, which have written particularly significant pages in the history of Ukraine since the days of Kyivan Rus," Kovtun said.
He added that such an important pilot project should encourage other communities to restore rivers.
The petition also called for the necessary draft laws to be prepared and submitted to the Verkhovna Rada for consideration and appropriate decisions to be made for:
- fundamental restructuring of the state management system in the field of environment, ensuring its independence from other executive authorities, stability, additional staffing with properly trained personnel;
- development of the state environmental monitoring system using modern means of observation and control;
- urgent carrying out with the involvement of scientists, leading experts in the field of environmental law and public organizations systematization of the current environmental legislation for streamlining and achieving proper efficiency.
Earlier, EcoPolitic wrote, that in the Bilotserki district, a significant amount was discovered excess of cadmium in the Ros River. The concentration of this toxic element was 11.3 times higher than the norm.
As EcoPolitic previously reported, the Kyiv City Council supported the decision to create a landscape nature reserve on both slopes of Protasov Yar, for which Roman Ratushny, a public figure who died at the front, fought for.
