Lviv Mayor Andriy Sadovyy asked the Cabinet of Ministers to declare an 'environmental emergency' in Lviv. "The city commission called on the government to declare an 'environmental emergency' in Lviv. The organizers of the so-called garbage blockade can celebrate. We have no other possibilities left to avert an environmental disaster," Sadovyy wrote on his Facebook page on Monday, 12 June.
The mayor said French experts together with Ukrainian specialists are working to define technological parameters for a waste disposal project, however, the construction of a waste disposal plant provided it starts this year will take at least two years.
In April, the Cabinet of Ministers and the Lviv regional administration and local self-governments of the region have agreed that garbage from the city will be exported and disposed of at landfills in other cities of the Lviv region.
Under the memorandum signed in Lviv on Friday the city garbage will be taken to the landfills of 20 cities of the region during the next two years.
Lviv undertook to allocate before the end of the year 70mn hryvnia for the work of landfills and the resolution of a number of social problems in the cities-signatories. Another 30mn will be allocated from the budget of the Lviv region. The same amount will be allocated in 2018. The total amount of planned financing for 20 cities in 2017-18 is 207.5mn hryvnya.
The volume of waste that Lviv is going to dispose of is expected to amount to 580 cubic meters. The largest volumes are expected to be taken by Novoyavorivsk (80 tons), Sambir (70 tons), Mykolayiv (60 tons), Drohobych (50 tons), and Stryi and Chervonohrad (40 tons each).
Lviv has ben experiencing problems with garbage disposal for about a year after the city's main dump was closed after a ruinous fire.