Juggling with petitions: will Kyiv City Council protect the Dnipro Spit from development?
Another scandal is looming in Kyiv. After the city authorities opened an amusement park on Obolonsky Island, a nature reserve, the Kyiv City Council planned to create a large-scale parking lot near the Sobache Gyrlo Spit. It is designed for more than 700 cars. They also plan to build another bridge here—this will be the third (!).
Activists suspect that creating such a large-scale and expensive infrastructure in times of war is only the first step. The development of the Sobache Hyrlo spit, where this bridge is supposed to lead, may follow. This is 33 hectares of expensive recreational territory on the Dnipro River, which currently has no protective status.
The sponsor of the already-built wave bridge, by the way, was Stolitsa Group, which is associated with the sponsor of Batkivshchyna, Vlada Molchanova. It is this company that appears in one of the “concepts” of Kyiv’s development. And on the spit itself, according to Nashi Hroshi, the court awarded 6 hectares of land to a company associated with the scandalous developer Ihor Mazepa. Therefore, Kyiv residents have really substantial reasons to worry.
The struggle to preserve the territory where they want to create a parking lot has been going on for a year and a half. After numerous appeals from the public to the prosecutor’s office, the Kyiv City Council, and other authorities, a petition in support of the parking lot construction suddenly appeared in the summer. This was preceded by an article in the municipal media outlet Evening Kyiv, which later also supported this particular petition.
In response, activists also filed a petition demanding that the parking lot be moved and built near Natalka Park and the Wave Bridge. The second petition was ahead of the first in terms of the speed of signature collection. However, Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko granted the one supported by the municipal media. Now, the public is trying to protect the spit and is asking to grant it a nature conservation status, but this contradicts the plans of the city authorities.
The Holka civic initiative found out what Sobache Hyrlo Spit’s prospects for receiving this status are and why petitions in Kyiv that receive the required number of votes are treated differently.
The Kyiv authorities support the construction of a parking lot that will take 30-40 minutes to reach Natalka Park.
The route from the planned parking lot to Natalka Park
Kyiv’s chief architect, Oleksandr Svystunov, explains why the parking lot is planned here:
General plan 2020, the tunnel runs along a private plot with the designation “Residential and commercial development”
Kateryna Myronenko, a resident of Kyiv, does not understand why such a large parking lot is needed near Sobachy Hyrlo and suspects that the spit will be built up:
Photo: NGO “PARK PRYRICHNA”
Denys Moskal (Batkivshchyna), chairman of the Kyiv City Council’s environmental commission, explains:
It should be noted here that in cases of such scandalous developments in Kyiv, the Batkivshchyna party is often traced back to the city. This applies, in particular, to the attempt to build a high-rise in the center of Kyiv, where Literary Square is located.
As for the wave bridge, it was built on the initiative of S&A LLC, which belongs to Molchanova’s Stolitsa Group, a company associated with the development of the Osokorky Ecopark. On the plaque, this organization is listed as the benefactor of the bridge. But at the time of construction, the beneficiary was S&A LLC, which included Bohdana Tymoshchuk, a member of the Kyiv City Council ( Batkivshchyna). Later, she was removed from the list of beneficiaries before the detailed plan of the Obolon area was considered.
A memorial plaque near the wave bridge. Source: Oleh Symoroz’s blog
That is why Kyiv residents have some well-founded fears that Stolytsia Group initiated the construction of the wave bridge for a reason and became a patron of the expensive project.
Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klytschko, in a commentary to the Holka civic initiative, explains what he will do next and says that his political opponents are fueling the outrage:
Now activists are demanding that a nature conservation status protect the spit on the Dnipro.
Kyiv City Council members have adopted decisions that will limit the deputies’ ability to submit projects to create nature reserve funds. This was emphasized by Kyiv City Council member Yevhenia Kuleba (Servant of the People) in the spring before the vote:
After this speech, Kyiv City Council members supported the draft decision. Here are the results of the roll call vote.
The decision of the Kyiv City Council on whether deputies can submit projects on protected areas
Leonid Yemets (EU), Head of the Kyiv City Council’s Regulatory Commission, says that despite this decision, any deputy can continue to submit their projects:
Regarding this decision, which caused such a controversy, the Kyiv Ecological and Cultural Center appealed to the State Regulatory Service and even sent a letter to the mayor of Kyiv.
Thus, the decision is not in line with the principles of state regulatory policy… Summarizing the above, we suggest taking measures to bring the decision in line with the requirements of current legislation and the principles of state regulatory policy defined by the Law.
-the State Regulatory Service said in a letter to Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko.
Letter from the State Regulatory Service to the CECC
But the remarks are limited to a violation of the procedure, not to the essence (!) and content of the decision. But the fact is that if this is a regulatory act, then public discussions with the public should have been held in accordance with the requirements for regulatory acts.
At the end of the summer, Kyiv residents appealed to the relevant department to prepare a draft decision to grant the Sobache Hyrlo Spit a nature conservation status. But its head, Oleksandr Voznyi, explained in Evening Kyiv:
The fact is that this decision of the Kyiv City Council, which defines the procedure for creating local nature reserves, does not directly provide for the need to submit an expert opinion. However, such a requirement is present in the Law of Ukraine “On the Nature Reserve Fund of Ukraine.”
Oleksiy Vasylyuk, a representative of the Ukrainian Nature Conservation Group, told The Needle that the area does have significant natural value:
It should be noted that Nashi Hroshi wrote that by a court decision, the city was obliged to issue urban planning conditions and restrictions for the design of a housing and construction complex on 6 hectares of land to a company associated with Ihor Mazepa, a business partner of the former mayor of Irpin and developer Volodymyr Karpliuk.
The black in the middle of the spit is private property – 6 hectares
Earlier, the Golka civil initiative wrote that Mazepa initiated a media campaign in several media outlets, which boiled down to “zeroing out” claims against the carve-up artists and giving carte blanche to the authorities. During this media wave, a number of legislative initiatives in the interests of developers with significant corruption risks appeared in the Verkhovna Rada.
The example of two parking lot petitions makes it clear that the city authorities can support the right petitions while rejecting unnecessary ones.
Kyiv resident Vadym Kovadlo recorded the voting on these two petitions:
Calculation of the dynamics of the number of signatures by Vadym Kovadlo. The blue indicates a petition in favor of the parking lot construction, and the orange indicates a petition against it.
In the end, the mayor supported the petition in favor of the parking lot and explained that raising the ground level to 94 meters would solve the problem of flooding.
Excerpt from a response to one of the petitions signed by Mayor Klytschko
However, according to Kyivgenplan, the water table is already above 94 meters. Therefore, the risk of flooding remains.
As for the second petition, Klytschko, in his response, explained to Kyiv residents why he refused: the alternative sites have not had a detailed site plan approved, and the land plots have a different designated purpose, and noted that there is another petition.
It is worth noting here that the local council is responsible for approving detailed plans and establishing the designated purpose. But the question arises: Why does the mayor of Kyiv decide which petition to support and which to reject?
Anna Yemelianova, a representative of the Center for Innovations Development, which has introduced petitions not only at the local level but also at the level of the Presidential Office, notes:
Leonid Yemets, who heads the regulatory commission, notes that currently, any Kyiv City Council member can submit a project in support of any petition:
When the Kyiv City Council handed over the land for this scandalous parking lot to the utility company Zhytloinvestud-UCB, law enforcement became interested in this issue.
Last summer, the Obolon Police Department reported that it was conducting a pre-trial investigation into a possible violation of environmental legislation in criminal proceedings for “Abuse of Power or Position.”
Photo: Response of the Obolon Police Department of the Main Department of the National Police in Kyiv to the MP’s appeal regarding violations of environmental legislation
The NGO Park Pryrechna filed an administrative lawsuit with the court demanding to cancel the decision of the Kyiv City Council to allocate a plot of land on Pryrechna Street for parking. The grounds for the lawsuit were violations of urban planning and environmental laws, as well as a violation of the Kyiv City Council’s decision to designate the land plot as a green zone.
Recently, the Kyiv District Administrative Court dismissed the claim of the NGO. Judge Iryna Kolesnikova heard the case.
The organization is currently preparing an appeal, and at the same time, the Ukrainian Nature Conservation Group is working on a justification for creating a nature reserve fund to prevent developers from reaching the spit on the Dnipro.
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