Meat plant in Buguruslan will pay 14.3 million for waste

The Orenburg Regional Court recovered from OOO Aries in favor of the budget of Buguruslan more than 14.3 million rubles in compensation for damage caused to the soil. An enterprise for slaughtering livestock and processing meat will have to pay for violation of production technology.

At the enterprise, an open storage device was overflowing, and liquid production waste was sent by gravity to the adjacent public land plot. Laboratory studies have recorded contamination of the land with Class IV waste and multiple excesses of the concentration of hazardous substances, including nitrates, sulfates and ammonium nitrogen.

How the case went in the courts. The court of first instance refused to recover damages, obliging the company only to develop a project and reclaim the contaminated site. The Orenburg Regional Court disagreed with this conclusion. He pointed out that soil reclamation is allowed only if there is already developed and approved project of restoration works. If there is no such project, and the violator evades voluntary elimination of the consequences of the emergency discharge, he pays to the budget for environmental damage. As a result, the decision of the first instance was canceled.

Two things are important here. The first is the nature of the violation: we are not talking about a single release, but about a system in which the waste flowed spontaneously to a public land plot. This means that pollution was constant, and not only the soil suffered, but also the people who use this territory. The second is judicial logic: the decision of the regional court actually closes the loophole in which the company could get away with the promise of reclamation. If there is no restoration project, and the offender is in no hurry to eliminate the consequences, he pays with money. This is an important precedent: it shows that the reference to future reclamation does not absolve one from liability for damage already caused.

And do you think that the recovery of 14.3 million rubles is enough for the company to seriously think about the environment, or the fines for soil pollution should be even higher?