Landfills fuel stench and protests

KOLOMNA, Russia — Walking to a store in March, Olga Yevseyeva was hit by the familiar, noxious stench of rotten eggs wafting from the town landfill a few miles away. It was a moment that changed her life.

“This smell just made me explode with anger,” she recalled of that spring night in Kolomna, a town about 60 miles southeast of Moscow. “And I realized something had to be done, because you can’t just go on like this.”

Never politically active, Yevseyeva, 34, joined hundreds of other residents who stood in the middle of the road a few weeks later, blocking garbage trucks from delivering more of the waste to the landfill.

Thousands of activists have taken part in such demonstrations in the towns surrounding Russian capital in recent months, complaining that they are being used as a dumping ground for Moscow’s trash. They say the foul gases from the decomposing landfills have given them and their children respiratory problems, skin rashes and other ailments, and have rendered their homes unlivable and unsellable.

The growing outrage at the shadowy owners of the lucrative waste management companies and government officials who seem indifferent or offer only short-term solutions has driven some to violence: One man charged a garbage truck with an ax and another opened fire with a gun; someone even tried to set a landfill on fire.

Yevseyeva and several others were detained for their unsanctioned protest in Kolomna, and she ended up losing her job at the curtains store where she worked.