How does the Kharkiv region deal with destruction and debris?
Kharkiv met us with continuous aerial alarms: the alert system in the center of the city, wounded by Russian attacks, almost does not subside. Thirty announcements in two days, the shortest pause between notifications in the application is about 20 seconds. It is not our first trip to the de-occupied regions. But the ballistics reach the city in 40 seconds. It is hard to ignore the “increased missile danger” message here.
“We are not afraid of the alerts here in Kharkiv. If a missile hits, it’s usually before the alert is announced,” locals laugh.
We came to Kharkiv to investigate the problem of debris management. For the third month, the ReThink NGO (a member of the Ukraine Support Team coalition) has been developing methodological recommendations for debris management. The experience differs depending on the region, which is why we work on the ground. Here, in Kharkiv, for example, the dismantling of destroyed buildings is just beginning.
Scale of destruction
According to city Mayor Ihor Terekhov, Kharkiv has suffered the most destruction among the cities controlled by Ukraine. Currently, the number of damaged and destroyed buildings in the city reaches 8,800. In the entire region, according to the Department of Architecture and Urban Planning of the Kharkiv Regional State Administration, 48,900 such objects have been registered. This figure is indicative since it is unpossible to keep destruction records in active combat zones.
We start from the city center. The building of the Kharkiv Regional State Administration (RSA), damaged by the Russian Iskander missile in March 2022, is preserved. A construction crane stands in its backyard. Behind it are dilapidated old houses scattered on the ramified narrow streets. The scene looks as if the aggressor’s troops missed a dozen times before hitting RSA. The city conducts mostly operational work on clearing and securing the sites of attacks. A mass dismantling of destroyed buildings has not yet been carried out.
We are heading to Saltivka – the largest neighborhood of Kharkiv, where a third of the 1.5 million city population used to live before the full-scale invasion. During the defense of the regional center, the northern outskirts of Saltivka came under constant Russian artillery fire. Dozens of high-rise buildings without windows and with holes through them are covered with coal-black stains.
The first building is being dismantled here. It’s a sixteen-story building on 82 Natalia Uzhvii St. destroyed by Russian aerial bombs. According to the agreement with the contractor, the components of the debris must be sorted immediately at the construction site.
Later that day, at the field meeting of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on Environmental Policy and Nature Management in Kharkiv, Deputy Minister for Communities, Territories, and Infrastructure Development Natalia Kozlovska summarizes:
“We see that there is a lack of primary sorting on the ground. At the expense of the budgets of different levels, we will not overcome this problem. Our goal is to create such a model that would be interesting for business.”
Debris management
The slope of the 45-meter hill of the reclaimed body of the old landfill offers views of the new Dergachy landfill. On the left is a complex for the processing of solid household waste and a complex that converts biogas into electricity, which is almost ready for operation. On the right is a site for temporary storage (STS) of debris.
We came here to inspect STS, together with an official delegation from Kyiv. Here are Members of Parliament, representatives of the Ministry for Restoration and the Ministry of Ecology as in two hours the meeting of the Committee of the Verkhovna Rada, dedicated to the management of solid waste and debris, starts.
At the STS, one can see piles of debris, which they are trying to sort by fractions. Waste collected during the clearing of hit sites and overhauls of high-rise buildings is brought here. Everything that is currently stored here should be further sorted. This debris includes both solid household and hazardous waste. The issues of storage and processing of dangerous waste remain open both for Kharkiv (where the implementation of a modern waste management system is at the final stage) and for the entire country.
“We expect the bulk of the debris when the dismantling process takes on a larger scale. We now have separate piles of concrete and wood. But in the dismantling process, we hope to have more deeply sorted components. We plan to install special equipment, including modern shredders provided by international partners at the temporary storage site,” – Director of Kharkiv Municipal Waste Management Company Yuriy Suyarko says.
During 2023, about 8,500 tons of waste were received there. Last year in spring, the company began grinding concrete with its own crushers. However, the obtained raw material could only be used for road filling since the fraction turned out to be too large. According to the Ministry for Restoration, based on the community reports, there are 3 official sites for temporary storage in the Kharkiv region, where 4,000 tons of debris are kept.
“Any solutions in the field of waste management are expensive. If we do not plan the logic of infrastructure placement, we may end up in a situation where we have spent a lot of resources, but not solved the problem,” the Chairwoman of the UST coalition Olena Koltyk says during her speech at the Committee meeting.
The question of introducing changes to the environmental protection and urban planning legislation of Ukraine, which would regulate the dismantling and storage of debris, as well as their further processing and use in new building materials, remains unresolved. According to the Chairman of the Committee, Member of Parliament Oleg Bondarenko, parliamentarians are ready to work on this.
FOR REFERENCE. According to the head of the Kharkiv Regional Military Administration Oleh Synegubov, the damage caused to the ecology of the region as a result of Russia’s armed aggression against Ukraine as of the beginning of March 2024 amounts to 432 billion hryvnias.
Project “Rethink: Recommendations for Debris Management on the Frontlines” is a part of the Ukraine Confidence Building Initiative, implemented with the support of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).
