Yevhenii Medvedovskyi: Why Zhytomyr Region Must Once and for All Forget about Illegal Dumps

We need a full-fledged system that works proactively. This is what Yevheniy Medvedovskyi, head of the State Environmental Inspection of the Polissya district, emphasizes as he initiated a large working meeting in an open-discussion format.

The main goal of the meeting is to discuss what hurts the most: how to allocate responsibility for waste, who should respond immediately to unauthorized dump sites, what to do with landfills that do not meet environmental standards, and how to turn paper strategic documents into real changes in communities. Representatives of local self-government, the police, the State Emergency Service, the regional ecology department, the State Service of Ukraine on Food Safety and Consumer Protection, and the State Geocadastre joined the discussion.

Main challenges: from spontaneous dumps to fires at landfills

During the meeting, participants thoroughly examined several key blocks that require immediate attention and joint coordination:

Authority of communities: a clear division of duties and responsibilities of local authorities within a new legal framework.

Combating dumps: from identifying violations and finding culprits to organizing the elimination of unauthorized waste accumulation sites. Participants were shown concrete examples and photo materials from the Inspection's practical work.

Environmental risks and fires: discussing an extremely painful topic—emergencies at waste disposal facilities and algorithms for rapid response by all services.

Land issues: legal status of landfills, registration of plots, and subsequent land reclamation.

The regional plan is in place — time for action at the local level.

Particular attention was given to the Regional Waste Management Plan for Zhytomyr Region through 2034 year, approved at the end of March. This document defines a long-term development model, but under the Law on Waste Management, each territorial community is obliged to develop its own local plan within a year. It is at the community level that concrete decisions on waste collection, transportation, processing, and infrastructure development should appear.

“Today we can no longer view waste management merely as a matter of cleaning up territories or eliminating spontaneous dumps. We are talking about a full-fledged system that must operate proactively. The regional plan defines the direction for the region, and the next step is concrete decisions at the community level. It is crucial that all participants in the process clearly understand their powers and responsibilities and do not wait for the problem to escalate into an environmental threat,” emphasizes Yevheniy Medvedovskyi.