“For now, it is not planned to take those wastes from our region for incineration, so in about 30–34 days we will exceed the allowable amount of waste to be accumulated and stored for incineration, which will be about 3 thousand tons,” R. Malinauskas told LRT radio on Monday.
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According to him, this would result in “large fines” for the head of the Alytus Regional Waste Management Center (ARATC) and the institution.
“An emergency situation arises where the accumulated waste can catch fire, pollute the environment, and so on. Fearing and seeing that we are approaching such a situation, we informed, appealed to the Seimas, the ministry, the Environmental (Protection – BNS) Agency, that at the end of the month we will discuss declaring an emergency situation,” noted the mayor of Druskininkai.
According to his data, ARATC accumulated more than 1 thousand tons of waste last week. Their incineration, according to R. Malinauskas, is disrupted because the Vilnius cogeneration plant (VKJ) is not accepting waste for incineration due to the crisis in the capital, and the Kaunas cogeneration plant is undergoing repairs.
Member of the Seimas Audrius Radvilavičius emphasized that there is currently no clear plan on how the waste incineration capacities in one plant should be distributed among regions.
“The essence of the problem is that there is no clear and transparent mechanism on how to limit waste incineration capacities to be distributed among regions, especially during accidents, repairs, or crises. The situation may be further complicated by the planned and probably already occurred scheduled repair of the Kaunas cogeneration plant,” A. Radvilavičius told LRT radio.
“A national, not situational, management of waste incineration capacities is needed,” added the Member of the Seimas.
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VKJ representative Rima Aukštuolytė told BNS on Friday that the plant currently incinerates only waste from the Vilnius region. According to her, the technical limit of incinerated waste has decreased due to clogged filters.
R. Aukštuolytė previously told BNS that currently up to 450 tons are incinerated per day.
VKJ head Mantas Burokas told BNS at the end of July that the plant’s maximum capacity could be increased by about 33–43% – from 420 to 600 tons of waste per day. About 700 tons of waste are generated daily in Vilnius County.
BNS wrote that the waste crisis in the Vilnius region arose due to last year’s fire at the Vilnius waste sorting plant, which has not yet resumed operations, and VKJ reducing waste incineration volumes.
After the waste management crisis in the Vilnius region, representatives of the Ministry of Environment, VKJ, and waste managers will clarify the situation on Monday.
