‘Mayor’ Of Brest: Stop Making Some Backward Tribe Out Of Us, Battery Plant Is Biggest Pain In The Neck For City

Aliaksandr Rahachuk for the first time commented on the situation around the dangerous plant.

Chairman of the Brest city executive committee Aliaksandr Rahachuk for the first time commented on the decision of the regional governor to suspend the construction of the battery plant and expressed his position regarding this situation, reports Solidarity.

Communicating with the leadership of one of the large enterprises of the city, Aliaksandr Rahachuk called the battery plant “the biggest pain in the neck for Brest” in the year of its 1000th anniversary. According to him, an extremely unpleasant situation has arisen around the enterprise.

Rahachyk has told the following:

“When the construction thereof just started, the investor (IPower LLC) convinced everyone, including the authorities, that the project complies with all safety parameters, including environmental. Then the authorities had no reason not to trust the specialists. There was nothing to cover. When the construction was actually completed (in April 2019) and commissioning began, the State Ecological Expertise made measurements three times and three times recorded significant exceedances of the declared standards, including lead emissions — about 340 kg were released instead of the projected 3 kg per year.

In my opinion, to eliminate these violations, the investor must either return to the design level, or look for some other technological solutions. But it is not necessary to mislead the public and representatives of the government, poisoning our city and the Brest region, especially. Ecology is a sacred thing. If you got involved in this project, be ready to take responsibility and possible risks. Do not make us some backward tribe and prove the opposite. And in such a situation, the governor was forced to take an absolutely correct and only possible decision. ”

Thus, the authorities, in fact, for the first time announced the scope of the plant’s lead emissions during commissioning - according to Rahachuk, they exceed the originally declared amounts by more than a hundred times!

In the meantime, the management of IPower declares that they did not receive the official conclusion of the Ministry of the Environment on the violations revealed. Experts from the Republican Center for State Ecological Expertise, who carried out the main measurements ordered by the Ministry of Environment, responding to media questions, said that the excess of the stated emission standards was recorded only from one source out of 38 - nitrogen dioxide, and that is insignificant.

The impasse of the situation is also in the fact that the order of the Chairman of the Brest regional executive committee Anatol Lis of June 14 (mentioned by the head of Brest) suspended the construction of an accumulator factory, which de facto ended in April.

Commissioning is by law an intermediate stage between the construction and acceptance of the plant into operation. Formally, no one suspended it.

The management of IPower declares that it intends to continue commissioning until all violations are eliminated, which … they know nothing about.