Picturesque city’s trash piles up after impasse
LVIV: Ukraine’s western city of Lviv is famous for its picture-postcard graceful domes and cobblestone streets but it’s not such a pretty sight in the back alleys, which are blighted by growing mountains of garbage.
Waste has not been removed from some neighbourhoods in the city of 700,000 people since May, with the stench scaring off tourists and a rat infestation threatening public health.
The trash piles have built up due to an apparent political impasse between the Ukrainian government and the authorities in the city, arguably the most European-looking in the post-Soviet nation.
Kiev accuses Lviv’s mayor of failing to handle waste management but the mayor blames the crisis on a “garbage blockade”.
Last month, locals took action into their own hands, blocking city streets to protest about the situation, with some even setting fire to the mounds of waste.
Lviv resident Mariya Sydorovych, 58, said that despite summer heat of
30° more than C, she does not dare open the windows.
“It’s just an indescribable stink. Some rubbish piles have reached the level of the second floor,” she said.
“We have garbage cans near the playground. Children have not been playing there for weeks, because they cannot stand it.”
Doctors share residents’ concerns about the possible deterioration of the health of the city’s inhabitants.
“If we do not ensure removal of garbage from Lviv in time, we could face dangerous consequences for the health of Lviv residents,” Volodymyr Zub, the city council’s health department chief, said.
“Such a situation can lead to fre- quent and prolonged outbreaks of intestinal infections. Under such conditions, the number of rodents that are carriers of dangerous diseases may increase.”
While many locals accuse city authorities of causing the crisis, Lviv mayor Andriy Sadovyi said it was impossible to move the rubbish out of the city because of a “garbage blockade”.
He said the problem started in May 2016 when the main landfill for Lviv’s waste caught fire and four firefighters died, prompting state authorities to shut down the site.
“But since then we have a problem of where to move our 550 tonnes of garbage daily,” 48-yearold bespectacled Sadovyi lamented.
“With 5,500 landfills in Ukraine, I thought that we would be able to solve the problem but all these landfills began to close one after another.”
The embattled mayor went further, accusing the government of pressuring landfill owners across the country not to accept refuse from Lviv in order to discredit him not just as mayor, but also as leader of the Samopomich political party.