Tantareni villagers can't stand neighborhood of garbage dump

Villagers from Tantareni, Anenii Noi district, say they cannot stand the vicinity of the nearby garbage dump, where the waste from Chisinau has been taken for years. Last Saturday, July 12, a group of citizens blocked in protest the road to the dump. On July 14, a group of women saying they represented an NGO called “Marinimie” came to Chisinau Town Hall to discuss the issue with mayor Dorin Chirtoaca, Info-Prim Neo reports. “A tax should be paid for every plot of lands used. We ask the municipality to pay money to the village mayor office, especially because of the pollution in the area,” Liuba Ilovan, the NGO president, has said. Mayor Dorin Chirtoaca says the plot of land for the dump was given by the Government to the municipality in 1987, without implying any tax. The exploitation term is over in 2010. “We should exploit the dump since it can hold more,” Dorin Chirtoaca has said, stressing the municipality is aware of the issue and plans to build a garbage processing plant. He urged them to have patience. The head of the waste-carrying municipal enterprise, Tudor Maniv, has said all the works on the dump's territory are done for free. He has refuted the women's suspicions that the money for exploiting the garbage dump would allegedly go to the Tantareni mayor. The president of the Marinimie NGO accuses some waste brought to the dump reaches the nearby fields. There are fissures in the foundation of the dump and the underground waters are extremely polluted. “Although the children are being born healthy, after drinking water from wells, some of them develop malformations,” Liuba Ilovan said. Vladimir Garaba, the president of the Chisinau branch of the Environmentalist Movement, who was present at the meeting, has said all the underground waters in Moldova do not match the ecological standards. At the same time, he says no research has been done to prove the environmental situation in Tantareni would imply dangers of a catastrophe. “It has not been proved people would get sick because of consuming the water,” Vladimir Garaba added. The sides have agreed that the municipal enterprises will gather the waste from the fields and will take better care of the dump territory. The garbage dump from the Tantareni village – at 30 km from Chisinau – has been built to store the garbage for 20 years. The volume of the waste collected in Chisinau has doubled the last couple of years, from 1 to 2 cubic meters per capita annually, especially because of the larger quantities of plastic bottles and packages. As much as 3,700 cubic meters of refuse is carried from Chisinau to the dump daily.