Case: Waste Incineration
Plant
EPL versus Lviv City Council
Region: Lviv, Lviv region
Essence of case: Prevention of the environmentally dangerous
project
Parties: EPL, Lviv City Council
Essence of problem: Prevention of construction of dangerous
waste incineration plant through the Internet
Main facts:
It happens that in our work we have to use not only purely legal
methods. In particular, in the following case we prevented the
construction of a dangerous waste incineration plant with the
help of Internet.
At the beginning of 1998 there was a publication in the local
newspapers about the construction of a waste incineration plant,
which had been planned by Lviv City Council (Rada). Being aware
of harmfulness and environmental danger of such type of objects
and of the previous repeated attempts to "grant" Ukraine
with out-of-date technologies and equipment, we started gathering
information concerning that project. From the officially obtained
information at Lviv Regional Department of Environmental Safety
we learned that there was an intention to construct a waste incineration
plant in Lviv. It was proposed to locate the plant directly within
the territory of the city. But the project documents had not
been presented for examination by that time.
Soon Mr. V.Poluiko, a representative of City Council, who was
also worrying about the mentioned question, applied to EPL.
He told us about the agreement on construction of the waste incineration
plant with the capacity of 200.000 tons per year and the cost
of $ 90.000.000, which had been signed in May 1998 by Lviv City
Council. Having analyzed the text of the signed agreement, we
came to a conclusion that some provisions of the agreement had
violated the legislation, as far as such decisions could not
be made without the preliminary environmental impact assessment
of the project. But the agreement had already envisaged payment
for a ton of incinerated waste ($1,2 per ton), for electric energy
that would be produced ($0,0253 per 1 KW/hour) as well as for
heat energy ($17,9 per ton). We informed the representative about
violation of legislation as a result of signing that agreement,
and he, in turn, notified Lviv City Council. But no reaction
followed. On the contrary, at that time Lviv City Council agreed
on allotting a land lot in the village Soroky-Lvivski located
not far from Lviv. In order to get a land lot for construction,
it is necessary to receive a positive decision of Lviv City Council
Session, and the procedure is rather difficult. It is much easier
to do this at the level of Village Council (Rada).
Scandinavian company was offering a famous Scandinavian technology
of waste incineration and, as a result of this, production of
electric energy.
We were not interested in that and, thus, decided to find information
about that "new technology" and that company, in particular
by means of Internet. A long search of the company by its name
gave no results. The address of the company was indicated in
the agreement, so we managed to find a WEB page of Alvesta city
where that company was supposed to be registered. In spite of
the fact that the page was in Swedish, we understood information
about the city and the city administration. Alvesta is a small
city with a population of 20.000 citizens. Therefore, a large
company with famous technologies able to invest 90 million dollars
in the construction abroad must be well-known there. We sent
a letter to Alvesta City Major and to the Economy Department:
The Charitable Foundation “EPL” (Lviv, Ukraine) is
the public interest environmental law organization that works
in the sphere of protection of environmental rights. Recently
we learned that the Lviv City Council signed the agreement with
Swedish company located in Alvesta:
Scandinavian Gartner Environmental Recycling AB Gerab, address:
Bokelunt sv.7, S 34235 Alvesta, Sweden, represented by vice-president
Mr. Kurt Johanson and Mr. Lars Palm who act in accordance with
the Swedish Law and Statutory documents of the Company.
The subject of the agreement is construction and maintenance
of an INCENERATOR PLANT the total cost of which is 90,000,000
USD. We know that such technology could be dangerous to environment
and cause harm to the people health. We are aware of many controversial
issues associated with this project, especially with respect
to environmental safety. We would appreciate if you could inform
us if such company exists in Alvesta and if it operates there.
We shall appreciate any information about this company you can
possibly provide.
Thank you in advance for your cooperation.
With best wishes,
Dmitry Skrylnikov
Executive Director of EPL
We were ready to receive any response, but the information we
got the next day surprised even us:
Thank you for the mail. I answer instead of Kjell Rosenlöf and
Anne-Christine Gustavsson.
It was nice to get a letter from Ukraine, it does not happen
every day!
We do not know very much about the company you are asking about.
But we know the following things:
- Kurt Johansson lives in Alvesta and works as a taxi driver;
- Kurt Johansson works together with Lars Palm and another
person (Klaus Gartner) to build and sell distant water heating
plants.
They have not sold any projects in Sweden but according to
what they have told me they try to sell projects in other countries.
- I cannot find their company (Scandinavian Gartner Environmental
Recycling AB Gerab) in my register of limited companies in
Sweden. Ask them about the registration number of the companies.
Do you have a web page?
Good luck with the incinerator plant. It seems very gigantic
to me!
Börje Norén
Chief industrial development officer
We immediately sent the copies of these letters to the City
Mayor, to Lviv Regional Department of Environmental Safety and
informed other interested parties. Somehow journalists learned
about it and such strange correspondence caused their great interest.
Publications appeared in mass-media, and the citizens learned
about that story.
Soon the City Council informed us that it had notified the Swedish "company" about
nullifying the agreement.
In such a way the shady transaction connected with implementation
of an environmentally dangerous project in Lviv has come to grief. |
