Abkhazia's landfill dilemma: Clean-up in four months or four years?
“Entry forbidden. Private property” – a banner states at the entrance to the former taxi park in Sukhum. But behind the barrier, a truck and tractor are visible. They are municipal workers removing household waste that has accumulated here over five years.
“A temporary measure becomes permanent”
In 2018, when Sukhum authorities closed the city’s landfill – known as the Mayak Dump – municipal services had to urgently find a new place for disposing of household waste.
It was decided to take Sukhum’s trash to the city of Gal. But not directly; instead, they stored it temporarily until there was enough to transport in large vehicles. This was cheaper.
The “temporary” place chosen was the area of the former taxi park.
“This is the only paved, fenced area in the city, away from residential buildings, with the possibility of draining into the central sewer system,” says Abkhazia‘s chief sanitary officer Alla Belyaeva.
The plan was this: every day, garbage trucks would bring the day’s collected trash to this site, and when there was enough for a large truck, it would be taken to the landfill in Gal.
“If we send the trash directly to the landfill in the Gali district, we would be transporting air, and at a very high cost,” explained Valery Bganba, the then prime minister of Abkhazia.
This system worked for several years but not exactly as planned. The large truck didn’t go to Gal according to schedule: sometimes the driver was sick, sometimes the vehicle was in repair. So over time, the transfer station turned into a “full-fledged” dump.
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Waiting for the new landfill
In October 2021, the Abkhazian government decided to start building a modern landfill in Katsykyt village. It was planned to open in 2022, but it hasn’t opened or even been completed yet. According to municipal workers, the delay is due to the initial budget not including the construction of sewage treatment facilities, which had to be financed separately. Sukhum mayor Beslan Eshba said that another one and a half to two months are needed, and the landfill will finally start operating by the end of spring 2024.
There is another problem – collecting and removing trash from the city. According to Beslan Eshba, up to 2000 cubic meters of trash accumulate in Sukhum every day, while not all residents pay for its removal. However, the mayor hints that with the adoption of a new housing code, things will change: rates will increase and a mechanism for collecting fees will be implemented.
Four months or four years?
Meanwhile, city authorities intend to clear the former taxi park of trash by the summer. Currently, this transfer station is closed. Locals say that now trash is being sorted in the area of the municipal administration of Mayak district, but the authorities have not confirmed this information.
Mayor Beslan Eshba says that cleaning the transfer station will take three to four months. However, residents of nearby houses are highly doubtful that a few months will be enough to remove all the trash that has accumulated over the years.
Manana Shamba, a People’s artist of Abkhazia and vocalist of the chapel, has been contacting various services for years as the landfill grew in front of her house. At her request, sanitary treatment for cockroaches and rats was conducted at the site. By the end of last year, the part of the landfill adjacent to the residential area was cleaned up.
“This winter, the trash didn’t bother us, there was no smell, and there were significantly fewer cockroaches. But last summer when it was burning, we were even planning to evacuate from our house. I wish the garbage would be removed by summer, but it’s hard to believe,” says the artist.
People find it hard to believe that the landfill will be cleaned because since July 2023 no new trash has been brought in, and since November old trash has been actively removed, but it has not decreased even by a third.
The leaseholder of the taxi park area is the internet provider “Sistema”. Its co-founder, Dmitry Khalbad, told journalists that municipal workers have started to remove trash more frequently and in larger amounts, but even at such rates, clearing the taxi park will take much longer than the mayor suggests.
Khalbad claims that currently, there are about 30,000 cubic meters of trash there, and by his estimates, it will take municipal workers about four years to remove it all.
“Trash bushes”
The problem of trash in Sukhum is very acute for several reasons.
First, it has to be transported far away – to the other end of the republic.
Second, spontaneous landfills form in different parts of the city, and combating them requires time and resources.
People avoid approaching garbage bins and leave bags of household waste next to the containers, which stray animals then scatter. Some try to throw trash out of car windows and often miss. Others leave bags of trash in building entrances or hang them on bushes.
Without improving the population’s waste management culture, it’s impossible to deal with the trash problem using municipal services alone, says chief sanitary officer Alla Belyaeva.
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