The dwellers of Sverdlovsk Region-based Altynai, Sukhoi Log, and Reftinskiy settlements carried out a picket in the center of Yekaterinburg on September 25, 2009. This was done to protest against the illegitimate actions of Reftinskaya state district power plant (Enel OGK-5). Ten people took part in the event altogether.

The picket coordinators report they are outraged by the enormous environmental degradation caused by the plant’s performance. They aim to make sure the results of the public hearings (which, in their turn, were carried out with numerous violations) are declared invalid.

‘We are definitely going to sue the plant through our public prosecution authorities. Over a thousand people have already signed our petition against dry ash handling meant for Vladimir Putin. On the other hand, only about ten people were actually present at the so-called public hearings on the problem, so what kind of validity can these hearings possibly aspire for?’ says Chairman of the International Socio-Environmental Union Vladimir Terekhov.

‘The design of Reftinskaya state district power plant actually provided for the use of dry ash handling system at first. However, the plant realized its mistake in just a few years, so they switched to the ‘wet’ system to avoid the destruction of the forests within seven kilometers of the ash dump. Nevertheless, they are now trying to ‘go back to the good old days’, even though the ash dumps are now sometimes twenty meters high, which means ash would get dispersed at a distance of many more kilometers,’ one of the picket coordinators and Chair of Reftinskiy Environmental Safety Center Olga Tkalich explains.

The event coordinators are also hoping to call a press conference in Yekaterinburg in order to shed more light on the negative environmental impacts of the plant’s performance.