‘The problem related to the proposed introduction of dry ash handling at Reftinskaya power plant has not become any clearer by now. We have suggested cooperating and sharing our data with the plant’s management, but they said they were not at liberty to accept any offers of this sort and said that we should try appealing to the Board of Directors of Enel OGK-5, the plant’s owner. In the meantime, not a single Reftinskaya power plant executive made any effort to help our application reach this Board,’ Chairman of the International Socio-Environmental Union’s Sverdlovsk Region division Vladimir Terekhov said to an UrBC reporter.

‘Mr. Zakharov, Enel’s Deputy PR Director, refused to get in touch with us; the mayor of Reftinskiy settlement was also unwilling to cooperate with us, claiming that Reftinskiy Environmental Safety Center was not a legal entity. In the end, we managed to get 1,500 people to sign our protest petition that calls for environmental audit of the project, and I took the paper to Vladimir Putin’s Yekaterinburg office,’ Terekhov noted.