An amazing story. Simply amazing. Compared with this, my whining about the crooked police refusing to investigate theft at Gazprom looks pathetic. Near Sheremetyevo Airport (the largest in the country), there is an illegal landfill.
Sure, there are illegal landfills in plenty of places. The problem is that, as you can see, where there’s a landfill, there are birds. Lots of birds. And where there are birds, airplanes really shouldn’t be. Because planes can crash. There is plenty of grim statistics on that. It’s no accident that all major airports have dedicated crews roaming the surrounding area and destroying birds’ nests (the perfect job for a former nasty little hooligan). There are also local residents who, for obvious reasons, are furious about having this as a neighbor. The landfill is illegal, after all. As a rule, in Russia nobody gives a damn about “local residents.” The sheriff doesn’t care about the Indians’ problems (a Russian idiom meaning the authorities don’t care about ordinary people). That surprises no one. But this is an airport! The biggest in Russia. During the period when the illegal landfill was operating, 141 cases of aircraft colliding with birds were recorded in the airport’s airspace, and 21 cases occurred during takeoff and landing operations directly at Sheremetyevo airfield. ////////
These are official letters written by the director of a state-owned (!) airport, demanding that the landfill be shut down. The results are impressive: a huge amount of paperwork and absolutely no effect. And note: this is not some blogger or a crazy old lady writing. Everyone is up in arms. Local residents, the airport, the local authorities. The Solnechnogorsk court even issued an official ban on dumping waste at this landfill. Doesn’t matter. They keep hauling it in anyway. The outfit running this garbage business is unbeatable. They managed to suspend operations once. From May 7 to May 12, 2010, the landfill was closed: before the arrival in Moscow of many world leaders for the Victory Day anniversary celebrations, the FSO (Federal Protective Service) stepped in. In other words, only the threat of some dump crow smashing directly into Nazarbayev or Hu Jintao was enough to stop everything for a week. When they told me this story at Sheremetyevo, I didn’t believe it at first. Of course, everyone knows the landfill business is highly profitable—especially the illegal kind—but surely not profitable enough to keep officials of this level on the payroll so they can fend off absolutely any pressure. Especially with the risk of an air disaster. Let’s say they take in 500 garbage trucks a day. At 3,000 rubles per truck. That’s 1.5 million rubles a day. Maybe they make $15 million a year from it. Not a small sum, but if, God forbid, a plane goes down—who will answer for it? But the fact remains: no one can defeat the people behind the illegal landfill near Sheremetyevo. I’m genuinely curious—who is protecting them? And yet people talk about Modernization and the Innograd (innovation city). Maybe they should build a landfill in Skolkovo too? Vekselberg on the bulldozer, Chubais at the gate collecting cash from the trucks.