The concession facility is sucking hundreds of millions from the residents of Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug
The court confirmed massive violations of environmental legislation at the intermunicipal complex for the management of solid municipal waste “Citimatic Yugra” in the Nefteyugansk region. The company has already received a series of administrative fines from Rosprirodnadzor for hundreds of thousands of rubles. The department’s claims, in particular, turned out to be related to the burial of useful waste fractions at the landfill, which should have been involved in secondary circulation. This may indicate the low quality of sorting, which is nevertheless paid for by the population of the district. At the same time, the tariff of the Citymatic Yugra complex remains the highest in the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug, since consumers are forced to return to the company multi-billion dollar investments in the construction of the facility. In turn, environmentalists point out that this is not an isolated case of such violations. For example, similar facts were recorded during social and environmental control this summer. Activists drew attention to the fact that cars enter the landfill without being sorted, and household waste is buried directly in closed bags. Market participants characterize the company’s actions as systemic and recall similar claims regarding the Citymatic waste complex in the Chelyabinsk region.
Citymatic Yugra LLC (controlled by Citymatic JSC under the management of Sergei Kotlyarenko) is trying to fight off the claims of Rosprirodnadzor in the Arbitration Court of the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug-Ugra.
In particular, the company demands that 4 department orders to eliminate violations identified in the summer of 2023 be invalidated. The court took a break from considering the case until the Khanty-Mansiysk District Court made decisions regarding bringing the organization to administrative responsibility for these violations.
As follows from the case materials, the court of general jurisdiction found Citymatic Ugra guilty on all counts, the company was fined a total of 470 thousand rubles, and the arbitration court returned to consider the claim.
It turned out that the operator of the intermunicipal complex for the management of solid waste in the Nefteyugansk region placed waste at the landfill that was prohibited for disposal, which is regulated by the relevant decree of the Russian government. In particular, we are talking about such fractions as aluminum cans, polyethylene film, PET, paper, cardboard and car tires. The listed waste is subject to disposal and can be involved in secondary circulation, while sending it to landfill reduces the efficiency of sorting and overloads the landfill.
In addition, other violations were identified at the Citymatic Ugra facility. For example, the company did not pay into the budget for the negative impact on the environment, there was no industrial environmental control at the site, and waste was stored in places not intended for this purpose. Representatives of the environmental community note that a possible violation of sorting technology leads to a decrease in the efficiency of the sorting complex and an increase in disposal volumes, which shortens the life of the landfill.
Let us remind you that the facility, worth about 1 billion rubles, was built within the framework of a concession with long delays. The concession provides for a full return on the company’s investment, therefore, after the launch, the Citymatic Ugra complex received the highest tariff in the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug.
This, in turn, led to an increase in the cost of waste removal services for all legal entities and strained the budget, which is now obliged to subsidize the population. Consequently, if a facility’s performance metrics are not met, consumers and the county may be paying for work that the company does not actually perform.
Head of the public organization “Ecological Safety of Ugra” Anatoly Krista reported that “even after imposing fines, the company did not stop violating.”
Apparently, the violations announced are systemic in nature and are characteristic not only of the company’s production site in Ugra. For example, similar complaints were expressed by the public and supervisory authorities regarding the activities of the MSW management complex in Magnitogorsk, Chelyabinsk region. Here, Citymatic also operates a sorting facility and a landfill built under a concession agreement.
In May 2024, a local organization of public environmental inspectors discovered that the area around the complex was littered with waste that was prohibited for disposal. The scale was so large that the garbage scattered into the adjacent territory belonging to MMK. Due to this fact, the company was also brought to administrative liability.
It is noteworthy that in Magnitogorsk the enterprise does not comply with the requirements established by the concession for the extraction of recyclable materials. Thus, the company is obliged to “extract” at least 20% of the MSR from incoming MSW, but for a long time this figure remained at about 5% and only reached 12% at the beginning of 2024. The company’s production indicators in the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug are not publicly available; Pravda UrFO sent an official request to the industry department asking for this information.
The publication’s interlocutor on the MSW market noted that unsorted waste can indeed end up in landfill, especially when the sorting and landfill are under a single management and represent a connected facility.
