When dealing with the environment, the solution to one problem sometimes results in creating another. For example, when in 2003 some Hungarian companies needed to rid themselves of acidic tars to meet the requirements for accession to the European Union, they exported the environmentally offensive material to Ukraine. Now several thousand tons of acidic tars not only blight the landscape in Lviv region, but also may eventually require removal or very costly treatment to allow Ukraine to move its Euro-integration efforts toward success.
"The European Union moved the Berlin Wall to our borders, and now European garbage goes through this wall to Ukraine," said Dmytro Skrylnikov, without any emotion. The reasons for his Euro-skepticism are detailed in a set of thick files in his small and tidy basement-office.
Skrylnikov is an attorney for a Lviv-based non-governmental organization (NGO) the Bureau of Environmental Investigation. One of his environmental cases has lasted for about four years, and this long story is far from its end.
At the end of 2003, the small Lviv region community of Dobrotvir mounted protests and thus prevented the burning of acidic tars in the ovens of a thermoelectric power station. The Office of Public Prosecutor brought an action against the main engineer of Dobrotvir power station; though it was he who gave the alarm, and soon he was discharged in court. The proposed burning was forbidden.
Thus, 1,100 tons of acidic tars remain at the Dobrotvir plant. However, this is just a small part of all acidic tars brought to Ukraine from Hungary in 2003. Now these so-called "Hungarian" acidic tars are kept in five areas of Lviv region, such as the Stebnyk, Dashava, and Stryj rubberoid plants.
The best conditions for keeping the acidic tar exist on the Dobrotvir power station, according to Bohdan Matolych, chief of state administration of ecology and natural resources in Lviv oblast. Conversely, the situation causing the most concern exists at the Sirka sulphur refinery in Novyj Rozdil, where 18,000 tons of the acidic tars lay in the open air.
Ivan Zozulya, chairperson of the board of the Institute of Mining Chemical Industry, stresses that the acidic tars in Novyj Rozdil lay on the banks of a planned reservoir. Flooding open-pits would create that future reservoir. The project, already approved by the Ukrainian government, proposes to create a recreational cascade of three lakes instead of the sulphur open pits. Two of the recreational lakes are ready. Meanwhile, rainwater polluted with acidic tars streams into the third one, and this third lake is about to connect with the Dnistr river, and thus with the Black Sea.
The danger of acidic tar is an indisputable fact for environmentalists. Persons in charge of, or with any kind of involvement with, acidic tar are inclined to downplay the danger, although they admit that it is a toxic waste. A common sense approach raises the question: if acidic tars are not really dangerous, and even valuable as some claim, why did the Hungarians try so hard to get rid of them.
Acidic tars are the product of outdated oil refineries. Until late 1980s, the efficiency level of oil refining was quite low in the Soviet Union and its satellites in Eastern Europe, with 40 to 45 percent tar residues. The Soviet era technology required an acid catalyst, such as sulfuric acid. That's why tars are acidic and that's why the problem is prevalent mostly for transition countries.
When Hungary was about to join the European Union, it had to clean up its toxic wastes, and particularly acidic tars. The Hungarian company, Geohidroterv Kft. as guarantor along with Metratek Kft, the Budapest representative of U.S. based Roscop Inc., as supplier, signed a contract with an affiliate company of the Ukrainian Ministry of Internal Affairs, Specservice, to import tars from Hungary. Specservice rented a place for tars on the territory of Novyj Rozdil Sirka refinery in December 2001. The plan was to refine tars into a modified material for construction. During 2002, Specservice brought tars onto the place, after which tars were partly mixed with limestone to neutralize the acid, according to SpecService. However, environmentalists claim that the alleged mixing was nothing more than a sham and did not have the claimed result.
In April 2003, Geohidroterv Kft., acting as agent for the owner of the tars, MOL Oil Company, and Roscop, Inc., represented by Metratek, contracted with Osma-Oil Ltd. to receive and utilize up to 70,000 tons of tars. The contract specified that the final result of utilization would be burning the tars along with coal for power generation. Osma-Oil had imported about 6,000 tons of hazardous waste from an oil refinery in Hungary, and thus acidic tars appeared in Dobrotvir.
After negative publicity in Dobrotvir, the State Executor Service, a branch of Ukraine's ministry of justice that carries out court functions similar to those of the U.S. Marshals Service, arrested train wagons containing the tars. Soon a new player in this scenario, the Ukrainian-Hungarian Joint Venture Econova, got technical documentation from Specservice to launch production of modified materials at the same Sirka refinery from the same tars. Econova also tried to get Hungarian acidic tars from Osma-Oil Ltd. Nevertheless, Econova's main engineer sent a memorandum on test analyses of tars from 27 train wagons. He mentioned that the amount of arsenic was 300-500 times over the limit.
On September 14, 2004, the Novyj Rozdil City Council passed a local ordinance forbidding the refining of tars in the area. This decision was based on the concerns of some Sirka employees about suspicious wastes. In the same way, the local community stopped the production of construction materials from acidic tars in Dashava.
The State Administration for Ecology and Natural Resources in Lviv region fined Specservice and Osma-Oil Ltd., Bohdan Matolych said. Specservice closed its branch in Lviv, while at the beginning of 2005 Econova disappeared literally from under the State's nose: Econova rented its offices in the same building in Lviv where the administration for ecology and natural resources was based.
Matolych believes that Ukraine could appeal under the Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal. According to this agreement, when a transboundary movement of hazardous wastes cannot be completed in accordance with the terms of the contract, the State of export shall ensure that the exporter takes the wastes in question back into the State of export. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine sent a diplomatic note to the government of Hungary, which triggered negotiations on elimination of the tars from Ukrainian territory. An inter-departmental commission on this matter exists in Ukraine's Cabinet of Ministers, but there are no real steps toward utilization, elimination, or re-exporting the wastes to Hungary.
The Office of the Public Prosecutor in Lviv oblast and Lviv Inter-District Office of Publiń Environmental Prosecutor brought several criminal actions over the last two years, also with no results, said Matolych. He also said a few months ago some people showed interest in tar refining at Sirka, although his department has not received any application for hazardous waste transmission.
"Hazardous waste continues to be shipped to other post-Soviet states," Dmytro Skrylnikov added. "If there is an imbalance in the laws, with addition of corruption and economic factors, such states become victims of dangerous waste traffic. Some products are forbidden in the European Union and permitted in Ukraine. For instance, asbestos is now "a present" from some EU countries to Ukraine; some goods like old computers or electronic equipment were delivered to Ukraine as humanitarian cargo".
However, imported acidic tars are not the only waste problem in Lviv region. Three lakes surround a huge trash dump in Grybovychi, a city near Lviv. The Lviv Oil-refining Pilot Plant had been exhausting acidic tars there for about 50 years, until 1989. In Soviet times the plant produced transformer oil. "Every sixth ton of transformer oil in the USSR was made here," says Yevgen Didun, chairperson of the board of the plant. Didun was the main engineer of the plant in 1980s, and he recalls proudly his lobbying in Moscow to stop refining with acid.
"The plant belonged to the state; it was of all-Soviet scale", Didun reckons. "Transformer oil that we produced was in use both in USSR and its partners, such as Cuba or Angola. It would be fair if the state shares the responsibility for wastes with us." Didun asserts that processing of acidic tars is too expensive for the plant now as a private enterprise.
Didun also believes that it would be no tragedy to burn some tars in industrial ovens. "If one does so little by little, it would be no more harmful than burning coal. There is also sulphur in coal, as in tars, but nobody cares."
The idea of using acidic tars as alternative fuel was discussed and even proposed as possible. "Actually there are two projects," explains Matolych. "The first project is to utilize tars in the Lviv Oil-refining Pilot Plant, and the second one is to use tars as alternative fuel for JSK Mykolayivcement. Nevertheless, neither the first nor the second project has been planned for operational status; they are just ideas. Such a project must undergo environmental examination and get technological regulations approved. For this moment, these ideas are on the stage of a feasibility study".
Skrylnikov is concerned about the idea of using tars as a kind of alternative fuel. He says environment activists will insist on serious ecological expertise if authorities decide to burn tars. "Our tars contain dioxins. That means burning tars results in dioxin in the air. Even a minimal dose is very toxic and dangerous. It's fatal to burn acidic tars in ovens of boiler-houses: dioxins burn out at more than 900-1000, and those ovens cannot reach such temperatures. However, cement works are alleged to be safest for burning wastes because of high oven temperatures (1000-1200 Ń), but even those temperatures are not sufficient for burning of wastes
In our circumstances, when an environmental inspector cannot be allowed to enter a factory and State ecological administration cannot order a dioxin test, costing $1,000 to $2,000, it's too risky. It is just impossible to control exhaust of dioxins and heavy metals. They may be invisible now, but we can see the results in 5-6 years, when people get cancer."
The principal difference in approach to hazardous wastes in Ukraine and European Union explains why the Hungarian companies were in such a hurry to get rid of tars and why Ukrainians can keep it for ages, contemplating ways of processing and waiting for the best price to sell theirs wastes, as material or fuel.
Administrative forfeiture does not exceed 85 hryvnias. However, fines for pollution of the environment are calculated in way that is more complicated: for instance, an owner must also pay land tax. Didun said the Lviv Oil-refining Pilot Plant paid 9,000 hryvnias in December 2006 and January 2007. It is still cheaper for the plant to pay fines than to utilize tars, Didun said. However, he admitted that fines do not solve the problem.
For now, Ukraine in general and Lviv region in particular continue to grapple with problems caused by acidic tars. What began, at least in theory, as a way to help Hungary solve its hazardous waste problem has brought no good to Ukraine and may eventually rebound as a problem for Hungary.
Oksana Forostyna is a freelance journalist working in Lviv, Ukraine.
E-mail her at: horelyk@bigmir.net
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