Near Pyrohiv museum in Kyiv cut down forests to build a complex

Obviously, when the Governmental agencies are inactive and the local administration is not able to carry out their duties professionally, a whole forest strip in the historical district of the capital is very easily cut down. And this happened on Monday, January 20, in near zone of the “National Museum of Folk Architecture and Life of Ukraine” in Pyrohiv, as Kyiv’s citizens posted in Facebook.

“Now geophysical marking is already being carried out on a field of 102 hacktar, with the barbarous destruction of grass and woody vegetation of a unique ecosystem with the smallest forest-steppe natural zone in Europe .. Lawlessness and corruption
Rules in Ukraine !! “, Marina Tarachok wrote in Facebook.

To hide the felling marks, construction workers build a bonfire of chopped trees, that significantly damaged the grass cover.
A lot of ashes are now, Previously you could find up to 12 species of rare plants from the Red Book.

Who allowed this?

The interests of contractors in the buffer zone of the National Museum of Folk Architecture and Life of Ukraine have been held back for two decades.

However, the relatively convenient infrastructure and wildlife of the suburb attracted potential investors. True, to receive all the necessary building permits for all these years did not give the “status of the buffer zone” of the National Museum.

The solution was found by the mayor of Vitali Klitschko. According to the order No. 1379 of December 26, 2018

Department of Urban Planning and Architecture of Kyiv City State Administration, provided town-planning conditions and restrictions to “Khotivsky” agro-industrial complex for the design of a residential with social and public facilities. The total area of the construction site will be 16 hectares.

Town-planning conditions and restrictions issued by the “Khotivsky” Agricultural Complex determine the maximum construction height of 30 m. However, such indicators directly contradict the General Plan, which determines the upper mark of the building at 22 m. And this is only eight floors.

Moreover, according to the Plan, the area around the Museum is generally classified as a low-rise area, that is, the height of buildings here generally cannot exceed 8 m!

Bury monks’s hermit place

The discrepancy between the limitations of construction heights and permits issued is not the only “surprises” that potential project investors can expect.

On the slope adjacent to the felling of trees, we noticed an ancient fraternal burial of monks ” because of it, probably this territories was not built up for a long time”. The burial consists of a wooden cross and a stone tombstone, on which information about the buried is carved: “The mass grave of 60 executed monks of St. Nicholas monastery in 1712. Age 18-30 years. Buried alive”.

Radioactive burial ground

If the moral warnings for contractors do not scare them, then the environmental safety of future residents, and the project will obviously be positioned precisely as eco-housing, a little more attention could be pay.

Over 750 m from the planned construction, the Radon radioactive waste repository is located. “The radioactive waste burial site of the Kyiv State Interregional Special Combine Radon”, was built in 1962. As part of the state special plant for storage and disposal of radioactive waste.

At first, only the Radioactive waste from the research nuclear reactor of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine was brought to the repository, which is now located on the “metropolitan Avenue of Science”. However, over time, the storage area was increased, and waste was brought from other regions of Ukraine.

“Radon” is using for storage of tritium – a radioactive isotope of hydrogen used in industry and military weapons. In the storage area, it is in the form of a solution in special metal tanks up to a depth of 10 m. In 1995, a local industrial accident occurred at the enterprise – as a result of tank depressurization, part of the dissolved tritium fell into the right tributary of the Dnieper, flowing nearby.

The leak then managed to be localized, and an additional protective shelter was installed over the tanks. However, the current state of the storage remains a mystery – the enterprise is a sensitive facility, access to storage is limited.

Recently, the metropolitan blogger with the nickname Siren managed to capture radiation at 64 micro Rhengen per hour (with a maximum permissible rate of 50) on the banks of the Vita River in the vicinity of the storage.

Recall that in 2016, at the proposal of the Chairman of the Standing Committee of the Kyiv City Council on Environmental Policy Konstantin Yalovy, it was planned to transfer part of the radioactive waste remaining at the enterprise to the specialized state-owned enterprise Vector, which is located in the Exclusion Zone in Chernobyl. However, for lack of funding, these plans were never implemented.