Odesa Council Urges Tairova Village to Negotiate Sewage Cleanup Financing

The members of the commission on housing and communal services asked the Department of Municipal Economy of Odesa City Council to start negotiations with Tairova village council to pay for the work on cleaning the discharges of the Chornomorka-2 sewage pumping station.

According to the members of Odesa City Council, such a proposal to the Tairova village council is the most appropriate, since the pumping station mainly treats sewage not from Odesa, but from the settlements of the region subordinated to the Tairova village council.

The fact is that the wastewater is formed from the discharges of private households, some of which belong to the Odesa community and some to the Tairova community.

"Is there any understanding of what is flowing? Who pays for what? What is the environmental impact? Because when the pumping station was built, it was designed to pump out and discharge stormwater, and now some shit is flowing there. And we need to understand how these emissions are formed, and without the Tairova village council, we will not understand this," said Oleksandr Ivanitskyi, chairman of the commission.

He also noted that the leadership in the village council is now "reasonable", so there is a chance to reach an agreement.

"Therefore, it would be right to form a working group together with them and us, to involve specialists from the environmental inspection. We need to take some legal action against the residents who dump their feces into that sewer. A very small part of it belongs to Odesa - in fact, the land on which the station is located. All the rest of the shit that goes down there comes from the region," the MP said.

He emphasized that he personally observed the problem in 2010 and nothing has changed since then.

"We need to figure out who will take it on the balance sheet and who should be paid for it. If we collect it from the Tairovo community, who should pay for it? The Tairovo village council. Let them include it in their 2026 budget. But we have to formulate our proposal to them. We pay Infoksvodokanal for the supply of water from the Bilyayivka pumping station, right? Yes, we do. And here, the village council will pay us and let them deal with their consumers. Because everyone thinks that this is only our problem, and I do not share this opinion," said Oleksandr Ivanitskiy.

For several years, untreated sewage has been discharged to Chornomorka beach and further into the Black Sea by the Chornomorka-2 sewage pumping station located at 102 Svobody Avenue. It was noted that the ownership of the sewage pumping station was registered by the city council in 2012, but the executive committee could not determine the balance sheet holder of its own municipal property.

In the summer of 2022, the Commission on Technogenic and Environmental Safety and Emergencies of the Odesa Regional Administration became interested in this issue. Then the mayor's office and the district military administration were obliged to determine the balance sheet holder of the CNS no later than November 2022. As a result, the Kyiv District Prosecutor's Office of Odesa opened criminal proceedings under the article on marine pollution.

At present, meetings of permanent deputy commissions are taking place to consider issues that may be submitted to deputies at sessions, and Intent is monitoring these meetings.

Кирило Бойко