Fraud with Obolonsky Island. Citizens were denied access to important information during the war
An entertainment park is being built on Obolonsky Island in Kyiv. The price is UAH 200 million from the capital’s budget. The construction of the nature reserve fund and the senseless spending of funds could have been avoided if the Ministry of Environment had not closed access to the environmental impact assessment materials online under the cover of war. This means that citizens cannot identify violations. We are talking about 6,000 impact assessments.
Thanks to the Ecology-Law-Human Rights organization and the intervention of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe, the situation has changed somewhat for the better. While in the first year of martial law, materials on old environmental impact assessments were refused to be provided even upon request, now it is possible to obtain them. However, the situation is still far from the pre-war level.
Moreover, the parliament is actively lobbying for the cancellation of environmental impact assessments, thus, enabling clear-cutting. The public has blocked this initiative several times (No. 9516). In general, Ukraine introduced environmental impact assessment less than ten years ago under pressure from its partners, and even then only after two “yellow cards.” There was a real threat of non-fulfillment of the Association Agreement with the EU (violation of one of the European Parliament’s directives), and the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe threatened to suspend Ukraine’s participation as a party to the Aarhus Convention.
The Holka civic initiative found out how to obtain documents from the Unified Register of Environmental Impact Assessment and exposed a number of frauds. In particular, instead of Obolonsky Island, the documents contain a description of an island from another district of Kyiv, which means no studies were conducted.
Obolonsky Island was classified as a nature reserve 20 years ago, part of the “Dnipro Islands”.
Photo: Stroyobzor. Schematic of the plan for the recreational area on Obolonsky Island
Under Oleksandr Omelchenko, Kyiv City Council members ordered the “Pleso” utility company to develop a project for organizing the territory of the “Dnipro Islands Regional Landscape Park”.
Photo: Khreshchatyk
It turns out that Pleso developed an environmental impact assessment at the expense of the capital’s budget, and now justifies the failure to comply with the law that protects the nature reserve fund… by distorting the content of the Kyiv City Council’s decision 20 years ago.
This course of events should have stopped the Department of Ecology and Natural Resources of the Kyiv City State Administration from issuing an environmental impact assessment. But it used the report of Pleso as an excuse to violate the law. At the same time, the department did not forget to remind that Pleso must comply with the law and develop a project for the organization of the territory in the indefinite future.
However, the Ecology Department’s position on this issue has not always been the same. The tender documentation for the procurement of revision of the preliminary design and development of an environmental impact assessment contains a copy of the expert organization’s comments, which refer to a letter from the department dated 2021 requiring Pleso to provide information on the development of a territory organization plan. That is, they first demanded compliance with the law and then decided to turn a blind eye to the violations.
A fragment of comments on the examination of the preliminary design of construction on Obolonsky Island
The change in the position of the Ecology Department coincided with a change in its leadership. Three years ago, Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko appointed Oleksandr Voznyi as the head of this department, and he still heads it.
The documents that were developed for budgetary funds at the request of Pleso contain a significant number of frauds.
When it comes to Obolonsky Island, the environmental impact assessment report admits that by law, the park is subject to functional zoning (which determines how the territory can be used) by approving the Territory Organization Project (Article 24 of the Law on the Nature Reserve Fund of Ukraine). But there is no such project for Obolonsky Island.
Without the development and approval of the relevant documentation, the construction of an amusement park on Obolonsky Island is prohibited. And this is exactly what the conclusion should have been. But the developers of the environmental impact assessment, the Dnipro Design and Survey Institute, did the opposite. They hide behind the above-mentioned decision of the Kyiv City Council and present the recommendation of the Kyiv City Council as an indication that the island should be used as a stationary recreation area.
Excerpt from the EIA report
De facto, the law was ignored with reference to the decision of the Kyiv City Council.
Photos of the island show that it is essentially covered with vegetation. But the report says that the area of greenery will double. How can 100% greenery be doubled? The report simply states that only a quarter of the island is covered with greenery.
View of Obolonsky Island before the start of construction work
If an amusement park appears here, the green space of the island, which belongs to the nature reserve fund, should be almost halved. It is just enough to look at the construction project.
However, the falsified report claims that the exact opposite is happening – allegedly, “full preservation of existing trees” and “maximum preservation of existing vegetation cover” are intended.
Excerpt from the environmental impact assessment report
The Kyiv City State Administration’s Department of Ecology did not see this obvious manipulation and simply copied the description from the report, which directly contradicts the planned work. They had to check the conclusion for compliance with the law.
Therefore, there are two options: either the conclusion was issued with false information copied from the report without verification, or they knew about the violation and simply turned a blind eye.
When a nature reserve is used, the main task is to preserve it. That is why biodiversity and flora and fauna studies should be conducted. This is directly stated in the documents.
The planned scope of research and the level of detail following the Notice of Planned Activities
However, what is written in the Notification of Planned Activities is absent from the environmental impact assessment report. The only research that was conducted was a quantitative analysis of a sample of phytoplankton in the water near the island.
The rest of the promised research was replaced by quoting the work “Kyiv Islands and Coastal Tracts on the Dnipro River – A Look Through the Ages” by Ivan Parnikosa, which is even mentioned in the report.
At the same time, the report describes the situation with wildlife in general for the Dnipro River and the islands in Kyiv, without any information about Obolonsky Island. Below is a fragment with a description of the island.
Description of Obolonsky Island in the environmental impact assessment report
How can an island that was part of Obolon before sand mining for hydraulic dredging be formed as a result of the erosion of Muromets Island? How can its western coast have the character of a typical riverbed berm if the channel is from the east? Where are the pine trees and another separate island to the east? And there’s no mention of a “whole town of homeless people”.
The secret has been revealed. The developers of the environmental impact assessment copied from Ivan Parnikosa’s work, along with the results of vegetation studies, a description of a completely different island, which is administratively located not even in the Obolon district, but in the Desnianskyi district of Kyiv!
The fact is that these islands do not have official names, and unofficial names have changed. Obolonsky Island used to be called (and still sometimes has this name even in Kyiv City Council decisions) Obolonska Spit Island. Obolonskyi was the name given to the now-unnamed island on the other side of the Dnipro riverbed.
Parnikosa uses the old names of the islands in her research. At the same time, the developers of the environmental impact assessment knew about the island’s double name, as they refer to the Kyiv City Council’s decision with both unofficial names. This is yet another proof that they have not conducted any real research on the island’s vegetation and have no idea what they are writing about.
The violations described above are obvious, and their detection does not even require special knowledge in the field of ecology. If the access to the Unified Environmental Impact Assessment Register had not been closed in March 2022, the violations would almost certainly have been discovered by the public.
Another issue is the requirements for construction on the island contained in the conclusion provided by the KCSA’s Department of Ecology.
If the environmental impact assessment report contains false information about the planned works and the authorized body turns a blind eye to it, the conclusion should still contain certain mandatory requirements.
This was the case this time. In the environmental impact assessment report, Pleso Municipal Utility Company was assigned a detailed list of responsibilities, the fulfillment of which would save valuable vegetation on the island.
These requirements include the preservation of existing green spaces, habitat conditions for wild plants and natural plant communities, preservation of old hollow trees, prohibition of the destruction of rare plants, and the obligation to create special protection zones in their habitats, etc.
However, public access to the documents with these construction requirements was closed, so the public could not even check their fulfillment.
Part of the responsibilities for construction on Obolonsky Island assigned to Pleso in the EIA conclusion.
The Kyiv Ecological and Cultural Center conducted an environmental audit of Obolonsky Island last year, which revealed some violations.
Screenshot from the website of the Kyiv Ecological and Cultural Center
However, the Ministry of Environment closed access to the documents, explaining that it was a matter of national security.
Photo by the Kyiv Ecological and Cultural Center showing how Pleso is destroying Obolonsky Island
However, it is unclear what threat to national security can be posed by the publicity of information about the construction of an amusement park on the territory of a nature reserve.
The Unified Register of Environmental Impact Assessments was closed in March 2022. Records of almost 6000 environmental impact assessments look like this.
It’s not just about restricting access to documents. Even information about the availability of these documents is completely hidden.
For example, the link on the screenshot hides the same environmental impact assessment of illegal construction for budgetary funds on Obolonsky Island.
The conclusion of this environmental impact assessment was provided by the Department of Ecology and Natural Resources of the Kyiv City State Administration under conditions of conflict of interest. It is this department that is the main spending unit for the construction, and Pleso is subordinated to it.
The situation under consideration is also interesting because the procedure coincided with the closure of access to the register.
The public discussion was launched two weeks before the full-scale invasion began and officially lasted until almost the end of March 2022, when Russian troops were attacking Kyiv. There is no need to explain that holding public discussions under such conditions is fiction.
The very next day after these “discussions” were completed, the Ministry of Ecology restricted access to the register by Order No. 159, closing it to the public and leaving it only for employees of authorized bodies responsible for providing environmental impact assessment conclusions.
A month after the registry was closed, the Department of Ecology and Natural Resources of the Kyiv City State Administration issued a conclusion on the admissibility of the planned construction. This is even though the occupiers have been out of Kyiv region for several weeks.
In mid-June 2022, the Ministry, by Order #225, opened some of the information in the register on objects for which public discussions had not yet been completed as of February 24, 2022. However, information about the construction of a park on Obolonsky Island, contrary to this order, remained closed.
Thus, the key document confirming the possibility of construction on the territory of the nature reserve fund and establishing mandatory requirements for this construction has never been publicly disclosed in the register. Even the information about the existence of such a document in the register has always been hidden.
The authority responsible for the environmental impact assessment on Obolonsky Island was the Department of Environmental Protection and Climate Change Adaptation of the Kyiv City State Administration. Holka was billed UAH 2,500 for scanning the documents. These copies are stored electronically in the Unified Register of Environmental Impact Assessment and should be publicly available online.
Invoice for providing electronic copies of documents to Holka
The law provides for reimbursement of expenses “if satisfaction of the request for information involves making copies of documents” (Article 21(2) of the Law on Access to Public Information).
However, the environmental impact assessment report for facilities classified as having medium (CC2) and significant (CC3) consequences was sent to the authorized body exclusively in electronic form through the electronic user account of the Unified State Electronic System in the field of construction or another state information system under the then applicable law (the Law On Environmental Impact Assessment).
The requirement to pay for the production of paper copies when electronic documents are available is a deliberate obstacle to obtaining information.
However, this information also has a second manager – the Ministry of Ecology. Unlike the relevant department of the Kyiv City State Administration, the Ministry of Ecology promptly and free of charge sent the necessary information by e-mail in response to a request, but these documents should be publicly available to all citizens without any requests.
The threat to the environment and the state is not the conclusion of the environmental impact assessment, which is being concealed, but the activities that will be carried out under the guise of this conclusion. As a result of deregulation, there is no effective system of state control in Ukraine that protects against violations in the environmental impact assessment and the subsequent consideration of this assessment during construction. Environmental protection relies on a concerned public.
To close or severely restrict access to such documentation after public discussions is to destroy the system of public control.
We have a “state in a smartphone” and everything is built on official electronic registers. Currently, the old Environmental Impact Assessment Register contains publicly available information on 2234 cases, the oldest of which date back to early 2019. And information about about 6000 projects was hidden in it.
Under such conditions, the register has turned from a source of information into a source of misinformation for the public: if there is no entry in the register, then no environmental impact assessment was conducted. And by the time the error of this conclusion becomes clear, there may be nothing left to save.
Specially for Dzerkalo Tyzhnia
