Environmental expertise in the Vitebsk region vetoes a third of territorial development projects

January 18, Vitebsk / Diana Kurilo – BELTA/. A third of the negative conclusions of the environmental review in the Vitebsk region concern urban planning projects and land development projects. This was reported to a BELTA correspondent by the Vitebsk Regional Committee for Natural Resources and Environmental Protection. Last year, the committee's environmental review department conducted an environmental review of design and estimate and other documentation for 241 facilities. 76 negative conclusions (31%) were issued for the reviewed materials, with urban planning projects and land development projects accounting for one-third of these negative conclusions. According to environmentalists, this is due to the low quality of the design documentation: not a single one of the submitted urban planning projects and land development projects received a positive conclusion from the environmental review on the first attempt, and the number of comments on some facilities reached up to 20. In 2010, the committee's specialists also conducted an environmental review of pre-project materials, which includes the selection of sites for facility placement and the issuance of environmental conditions for design. In 2010, employees of city and district inspectorates participated in the work of commissions for the selection of 4242 sites, of which 32 cases resulted in official refusal to place facilities on the requested land plots. The main reasons for refusal were placement in violation of approved master plans, water protection legislation, and sanitary standards. For example, the Novopolotsk Nature Protection Inspectorate refused to place a car service and a parking lot in the residential area of Polotsk due to non-compliance with the approved master plan and violation of the standard sanitary protection zone sizes. The Postavy Inspectorate did not approve the allocation of sites for the construction of three livestock farms in water protection zones, resulting in the selection of other plots for the facilities. -0-