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2006-12-27
Western high speed diameter cheating with investors
One figures for the foreign investors, other figures for Russian people -
this is the method chosen by the Western High Speed Diameter (WHSD)
company, the customer of an international toll motorway construction
in St.-Petersburg.
Save Yuntolovo activists have found out that environmental impact
assessment of the project was calculated on the basis of smaller
figures while income for investors was counted on the basis of bigger
ones.
According to the Memorandum for investors placed on the official
website www.whsd.ru, the traffic on WHSD motorway is expected to be
560 thousand vehicles a day in 2015. The documentation for local
citizens gives a modest figure of 60 thousand cars. Both documents are
signed by the same organizations - Western High-Speed Diameter Joint
Stock Company and Research and Design Institute of Regional
Development and Transportation (RDIRDT), the designer of the road.
The deputy director of RDIRDT and author of both documents Natalya
Minina denied that the basic parameters of the motorway in the
Memorandum are correct: "We do not have such a road with traffic 600 thousand
cars per day in the city and in the whole country. If such figures are
on our website - I suppose it is some technical mistake".
Still the designers do not hurry to correct this mistake in the key
parameters of the road. After three days the Memorandum is still on
the web without any alterations still keeping investors misinformed
about their future income.
DANGEROUS PROJECT
Environmental impact assessment of the project is unsatisfactory. The
documents do not contain any analysis of motorway's impact on the
Yuntolovsky reserve situated on the North-West of Saint-Petersburg.
The road will pass at some 100 meters from the reserve and cross the
forest which serves as its buffer zone. The wetlands of the
Yuntolovsky reserve provide a resting site for migratory birds flying
from Arctic region to Western Europe and Scandinavia. 52 kinds of the
birds, animals and plants of the reserve are listed in the Red Data
Book of the Baltic Region.
Helcom expert , scientist from the Biological institute of the
St.-Petersburg University Georgy Noskov says that the motorway will
have an adverse influence on the reserve. He also claims that the
assessment of this impact was not conducted properly by the customer.
ENVIRONMENTAL RIGHTS
The customer and the city government are violating people's
constitutional rights on healthy environment and information about
environmental issues.
40 thousand people in Saint-Petersburg are against the project. But
almost nothing is done to solve this conflict. The city authorities do
not want any public participation in the project. Only after numerous
requests and protests the government was urged to hold public
hearings.
The announcement about the hearings was published in a specialized
newspaper "Sroitelny ezhenedelnik" ("Construction Weekly"). Save
Yuntolovo activists had to notify all the people themselves giving out
leaflets, contacting journalists etc.
The background materials were available only at the district
administration in working hours. The officials refused to make a copy
for those who could not come to read the documents on week days. "We
are not obliged to do this," they said.
Save Yuntolovo activists had to bring their own copying machine and
spend the whole day copying the papers. It was not the administration
but activists who put the materials on the internet so that everyone
could read them.
Save Yuntolovo public environmental movement, St.-Petersburg
Tatyana Skrodenis:
t.skrodenis@gmail.com
Vera Ponomareva:
vera.ponomareva@gmail.com
mob. +7 921 772 70 42
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