Moldova plans to reduce number of dumps from 1,900 to 10

There are about 1,900 dumps for domestic waste across Moldova, while according to European standards there shouldn’t be more than 10. Ministry of Environment Gheorghe Salaru told Info-Prim Neo that this situation is the result of 20 years of wrong policies in the field. The previous policy stipulated there should be at least one authorized dump in each community, which was achieved. There are 800 village and town halls in Moldova, which means there are 2-3 dumps for each of them. Still, the Ecologic Inspectorate continues to issue authorizations. Besides, there are unauthorized dumps and thousands of lei from the National Ecologic Fund are spent yearly to remove them. “Unfortunately, we live according to the rules we inherited”, said the Minister. In most of the EU countries, the standard is one dump for 250,000 inhabitants. Gheorghe Salaru stressed that in order to improve the situation in Moldova, people’s attitude needs to change as well as the laws. In 2010, Moldova qualified for a regional €6 million project, which includes 7 countries. The goal is for each country to develop or revise a concept for integrated waste management. By the end of last year, the Ministry of Environment initiated the Integrated Strategy of Waste Management (SIGD) for the South Development Region, inhabited by 500,000 people. The strategy proposes several steps so that in the end there are only 3-4 landfills for 8 districts. “We must find solutions, but these are expensive. Once the national strategy, which is almost completed, is examined by the Government next month, we’ll have an answer as to how and what we are moving towards, and we’ll start searching for the necessary resources”, said the Minister. The first project in the field was buying a waste disposal truck and excavator for each of the 8 southern districts. Special places were built for dumpsters. “We are beginning to have an integrated management of waste, which means collecting, selecting, retrieving, recycling and only then storing”, said the Minister. With the help of the German Agency for Development and Cooperation, it is planned to build an European-standard dumps in Soldanesti. It would store waste from three districts: Soldanesti, Floresti and Rezina, with a total population of 170,000 people. According to the upcoming strategy, by 2016 there should be only 50 dumps in Moldova. Afterwards, the number should drop to 10. Gheorghe Salaru said that many millions of euros are needed to solve the waste issue.