In St. Petersburg, everything is exactly as Sergei Shnurov sang it: «an installation of slops.» Citizens continue to complain about the garbage accumulated in their yards. Hundreds of requests from different districts of the city are received every day on the hotline of the company responsible for the removal of municipal solid waste. She assures that she is doing everything possible to rid the Northern capital of sewage. However, mountains of garbage melt as slowly as mountains of snow.
Throughout January, St. Petersburg suffers from two misfortunes: snow and garbage. If the first, albeit predictably, fell from the sky, then the city officials arranged the second themselves, placing the rake in such a way that it was impossible not to step on them.
The garbage reform started with the New Year's chimes in the Northern capital. Instead of dozens of carriers, who, under contracts with housing residents, have been cleaning containers uninterruptedly for many years, the Nevsky Environmental Operator (NEO) began to answer for the handling of municipal solid waste (MSW) in the city — from removal and sorting to disposal and processing.
< p>“We were faced with the task of reforming this sphere of activity not on New Year's holidays,” Valery Pikalev, vice-governor of St. Petersburg, admitted at a press conference on January 17. — We were familiar with the experience of other regions, including the Leningrad region. But according to the deadlines, which were maximally compressed, we did not meet either November 1 or December 1. As a result, we started on January 1, realizing that this is not quite the right and comfortable time for change.”
About the «maximum deadlines,» the official, to put it mildly, is disingenuous. Unlike the regions where the waste reform was carried out back in 2019, three cities of federal significance — Moscow, St. Petersburg and Sevastopol — received a three-year delay in its implementation.
But St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Region could not agree on territorial schemes for so long that the actual preparation began only in the first half of 2021.
Photo: Elena Lukyanova/Novaya
At the end of August, Smolny chose a single regional waste management operator in the city. Initially, the main contender was AO Nevsky Ecological Operator, a joint venture between the administrations of St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Region, VTB and the Inter RAO holding. The only rival of the NEO in the competition was the Leningrad Regional Ecological Company (founded by the Management Company for Waste Management of the Leningrad Region, which acts as a regional operator in the 47th region), whose complaint about the selection conditions was rejected by the FAS.
As a result, the NEO registered in January 2021 under the leadership of Ekaterina Gorshkova, the former director of Petroelectrosbyt, won the tender. Coincidentally, from 2022, it will be the EIRC Petroelectrosbyt that will collect payments for garbage collection from individuals and the population, which turned out to be the only participant in the competition for agency services for NEO. The tariff for garbage collection, by the way, has increased since January 1: instead of 5.58 rubles. now you have to pay 6.40 rubles per square meter.
NEO signed a ten-year contract with the city worth 131 billion rubles. And he announced four large auctions for the removal of waste from the city. In Smolny, it was assumed that the subcontractors of the single regional operator would be companies that had been working in this area for several years and had the necessary experience. But the officials' calculation did not materialize.
One of the leaders of the St. Petersburg market, vehicle fleet No. 6 Spetstrans, which entered the two largest tenders (worth 3.6 and 7.2 billion rubles), suddenly did not receive a single lot. The losers consider the reason for the refusal far-fetched, namely: the company did not submit the decision of the general meeting of shareholders to complete a major transaction. Now the complaint of the fleet number 6 «Spetstrans» is considered by the Federal Antimonopoly Service. Meanwhile, NEO started working with the “winners” since January: Eco Land LLC, Eco Vast LLC and Spetstrans vehicle fleet No. 1.
“One of the main conditions for the successful implementation of the waste reform in St. Petersburg was the mandatory preservation at the first stage of all existing carriers who know the city, routes, contractors. This was an essential condition for a smooth transition,” Valery Pikalev told reporters on January 17. — For us, the rejection of the applications of the fleet number 6 «Spetstrans» was a surprise. But the question arises: if a traditional, working, established company with a large team lost in the competition, then go for a subcontract, work for a year or two or three, prepare documents and win the next contract. No, they left, they stopped taking out the garbage.”
As a result, as Ekaterina Gorshkova, Director General of the NEO, explains, the new unified garbage disposal operator from St. Petersburg “faced certain inconveniences in the form of breaking the usual order.” It turned out that
new subcontractors not only have much less knowledge and experience, but also less resources, equipment, specialists and even garbage cans. And the NEO specialists themselves did not have time to study all the city routes
and establish interaction with managing organizations and homeowners associations in the city. Continuity also did not work out: on December 26, the former contractors of Smolny stopped cleaning the city from solid waste, and the new ones had not yet begun on January 1. Garbage began to accumulate on the sites where the containers disappeared: people carried it there out of habit. />
Photo: Elena Lukyanova/Novaya
“It must be admitted,” says Gorshkova, “that not only ordinary residents, but also workers in the housing and communal services sector want to relax on New Year's holidays. Plus, the fact of sick leave was superimposed. These, of course, are our miscalculations and those of our contractors-carriers. It was necessary to prepare better, — the general director of the NEO does not relieve himself of guilt. — Of course, we counted the cars, we had time. But it's one thing when we count on the amount of planned waste — these are just numbers. But in practice, we are faced somewhere with an unexpectedly large volume, which they stopped exporting since the end of December, somewhere with inaccessibility, which suggests that other equipment is needed, somewhere with unknown routes for special equipment, etc. — such nuances were not fully calculated.”
Poor consolation: the NEO not only acknowledged shortcomings and mistakes, but also began to correct them from mid-January. Attracted additional equipment (since the beginning of the year — more than 50 vehicles) and specialists, adjusted schedules and routes for garbage collection, improved coordination with housing organizations.