How Kursk opposes the construction of a dangerous chemical plant and succeeds in this, and the authorities respond with searches
In early 2023, the Kursk authorities announced the construction of an ammonia fertilizer plant at the industrial site of the Kurskkhimvolokno enterprise, which produces synthetic threads. The owner of the enterprise, KuibyshevAzot, a company owned by dollar multimillionaire Viktor Gerasimenko, decided to expand production in Kursk with a new chemical plant. The project was estimated at more than 75 billion rubles, and the company promised to produce about 200 thousand tons of ammonia per year.
In order to attract residents to their side, the owners of KuibyshevAzot guaranteed the Kursk people that chemical production would provide 250 “new high-paying jobs” and large tax deductions for the city. But for some reason, the townspeople did not believe it and began to oppose the construction.
Firstly, they were outraged that
for the sake of formal compliance with sanitary standards and rules, the regional government wanted to change the boundaries of the city and withdraw from its composition a whole area, which would allow the construction of a chemical plant near residential areas.
Secondly, environmental safety at other KuibyshevAzot facilities raised concerns: for example, in 2017, a fire caused a leak of toxic cyclohexane at a plant in Tolyatti due to a fire. At the same time, four years later, Rostekhnadzor revealed the unpreparedness of KuibyshevAzot to localize and eliminate the consequences of accidents.
Residents of Kursk launched a petition against the construction of the plant, and also began to actively speak out on social networks and write complaints to the mayor and governor, to the Kursk City Assembly, the Ministry of Natural Resources and other departments. And already on March 6, at a meeting of the regional administration, Governor Roman Starovoit announced that “the issue of building a mineral fertilizer plant is not being considered.”
How did the people of Kursk make regional officials and business retreat and did they defeat the chemical plant?
< h2 data-component="h1">No good will come of it
Irina Lukina has been living in the Volokno microdistrict, where the plant is planned to be built, for almost 60 years. She decided to publicly speak out «against». The woman complains: even without him, the ecological situation on the Fiber leaves much to be desired. For example, in the summer, pillars of gray smoke rise from the industrial site of the Kursk Battery Plant located next to her house — they make it almost impossible to breathe.
Irina lives on Trubnaya Street. There is a railway line 15 meters from her house. It goes directly to the Kurskhimvolokno industrial site, but is not currently in use. The only path leading to the nearest bus stop runs through the railroad tracks — the children from Trubnaya go to school along it. There is simply no other way.
To stop the construction of the plant, Irina signed a petition — she was supported by more than 7,000 people. Kuryanka Natalya Oleinikova also left her signature. Now she talks about her position on social networks: she complains that there are already sewage treatment plants on the Fiber, which “smells like the whole city”:
— The plant is going to process nitrogen, and it is included in the list of carcinogens. Our region is already among the leaders in terms of the number of cancer patients. And with the advent of another production … The cost of housing on the Fiber will collapse again. Nothing good will come of this idea.
Ekaterina Komarova, coordinator of environmental volunteering in the Kursk region, notes that secrecy provoked many fears. Documents about changing the purpose of the land withdrawn from Kursk, or about future environmental control, or about the plant project itself have not been published:
— Colleagues from Tolyatti wrote to me that they also have KuibyshevAzot. And in the city they regularly record excesses [of the norm] for ammonia. In addition, one must understand that such an enterprise cannot work with ammonia alone. It produces a wide range of products: nitric acid, ammonium nitrate, carbamide, carbamide-ammonia mixture. All these substances pose a serious environmental hazard, because of the same ammonium nitrate in Beirut [in August 2020] there was an explosion. And in the light of the current political situation, it is very thoughtless to build potentially dangerous facilities in the border area.
Like in Germany
For the first time, plans to build a new plant at Fiber were discussed in 2019. According to Roman Starovoit, the project was supposed to “become an anchor in the formation of the regional gas chemical cluster.”
The land for the project was purchased 12 years earlier. Then KuibyshevAzot bought out the Kurskkhimvolokno enterprise, which is on the verge of shutdown, and has been producing synthetic threads on Fiber since 1960.
“The Khimvolokna site has access railway tracks and a powerful electrical substation, which were built back in the USSR to ensure the operation of the largest plant,” says Viktor Gerasimenko, Chairman of the Board of Directors. — There are systems of water supply, sewerage and wastewater treatment, which are less than half loaded today. No one today will build everything in an open field, because it will never pay off. In Russia, there are many non-working or half-working factories with ready-made infrastructure.
Explaining why it is necessary to build a plant on Fiber, close to residential development, Gerasimenko refers to similar production facilities in Germany. There, for example, in Ludwigshafen, “one of the most powerful chemical plants in the world is located just three hundred meters from residential areas.”
However, Russian laws do not allow adopting foreign experience. According to SanPiN 2.2.1-2.1.1.1200-03, the sanitary protection zone of such production must be at least 1000 meters. Yes, and with the gas pipeline, which turned out to be necessary for the opening of production, there was a problem:
— Gas for future production is a raw material. Its required amount can be achieved by laying a high-pressure main gas pipeline,” says Jan Furtsev, a member of the Kursk regional branch of the Yabloko party. — A gas pipeline with such parameters is forbidden to be laid within the city limits. Therefore, it is proposed to transfer part of the land on which production is planned to be transferred to the Kursk region. This is approximately 8.7 hectares of uninhabited territories. They are located 800 meters from the nearest houses.
The map of the city will be redrawn
In fact, the lands on which the gas pipeline should be laid have not yet been withdrawn from Kursk. But many citizens are sure that the decision has already been made:
— The misconception arose from the audio recording of a certain citizen, which was distributed on February 22, Furtsev notes. — In this audio recording, she says, among other things: “Now the map of the city will be redrawn, and Fiber will belong to the Kursk district.”
The very next day, Roman Starovoit published a post in which he stated that no decisions had yet been made due to “the lack of an agreed possibility to provide raw materials, namely natural gas, in the required volumes.” However, since August 2022, Kurskazot LLC has existed, registered just on Silikatny Proezd.
Also, Starovoit did not mention that since the beginning of the month, the government of the Kursk region has been doing everything to make this possible. On February 8, First Deputy Governor Aleksey Dedov signed a decree calling for an initiative to change the city's boundaries. The Kursk City Assembly supported the initiative and recognized in the explanatory note to the decision: it is impossible to lay a main gas pipeline in the city — therefore, part of the Volokno microdistrict should be transferred to the Voroshnevsky village council.
On February 28, Roman Starovoit met with local residents at Khimvolokne ”- several hundred worried Kursk people came to the meeting. But the dialogue did not work. Those gathered began to chant: “We are against it!” and «Return the land!».
And if the Starovoit plant at least promised not to build it, the issue of withdrawing the land from Kursk remains open. Now a plot of 8.7 hectares has been suddenly decided to be used for the reconstruction of CHPP-1.
On social networks, many Kursk residents rejoice at the victory of civil society. However, already on March 10, searches were carried out at work and in the apartment of one of the activists.
According to Tatyana Bondarenko, the security forces did not hide the fact that their actions were connected with her protest against the construction of a nitrogen fertilizer plant in the region. Tatyana was forbidden to invite a lawyer, and the decision to conduct investigative actions was never submitted. This case was the first example of pressure on the opponents of KurskAzot:
— I have never called for illegal rallies and events, although I have repeatedly spoken out against the construction of a plant in the city next to residential buildings. […] I don't plan to stop. Complaints will follow yesterday's actions, and I will continue to fight until the victory. In any case, there is the Court of Cassation and the Supreme Court, I am convinced that they will not cover for the Kursk officials.
Whether production was really abandoned dangerously close to residential areas — one can only guess until written confirmation appears.
— Any position on this plant must be supported by a legal fact. Since there are no official documents of the project in the public domain, I cannot speak either for or against. But you need to understand that for business, the implementation of environmental protection measures at an enterprise is always a cost that does not turn into a profit,” summarizes Yan Furtsev. “Therefore, there is a tendency to reduce such costs. In addition, a significant part of the enterprise's emission control equipment is imported. In our difficult present time, there are difficulties with the supply of imported equipment. It is either impossible to purchase at all, or less effective analogues are available. This raises an additional question about the quality of implementation of environmental measures by future production.