Toxic waste will finally be disposed
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The state will probably dispose tons of toxic waste in eastern Slovakia, currently stored in barrels on the Chemko Strážske site in eastern Slovakia.
The disposal was announced three years ago by then Environment Minister Jan Budaj, but never executed. Now, the new Environment Minister, Tomáš Taraba, wants to proceed. „The Ministry of the Environment will, as it were, become the owner of these contaminated barrels, but then we will issue a call for their disposal in February,“ he said.
It is not yet clear how and where the disposal will take place. Ladislav Štibrányi, an associate professor at the Slovak University of Technology in Bratislava, who is a member of the expert team, welcomes the government's move: “There are about 90 of these technologies, some are speculative, but some are practical, and the most common is thermal disposal, so the waste is burned. But you need equipment for that, which is not available in Slovakia. The closest such plants are in the Czech Republic.”
At the beginning of the year, Environment Minister Taraba himself suggested that Slovakia was losing billions of euros by exporting waste abroad. The possibility of building its own incinerator was also mentioned in the government's programme statement. According to the head of the environment ministry, it could be built on the sites of former enterprises.
The former Deputy Environment Minister Michal Kiča, still thinks the mess should be cleaned up by the company that produced it, Chemko Strážske. “The state should not take ownership of it, because even though it is in bankruptcy, the costs can then be raised in the bankruptcy proceedings, because they can be several million euros, and they should be recovered from the originator, i.e. from the company in bankruptcy, which also has some assets, if I have the right information.”
(RTVS)
