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New bill to fight illegal dumping

Legislation comes on the heels of the country's second-largest waste fine

By Riva Froymovich
Staff Writer, The Prague Post
August 1st, 2007 issue

RENÉ JAKL/THE PRAGUE POST
A pile of waste found in north Bohemia in 2006 is an example of the illegal dumping the government is attempting to stop.
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The government is preparing new laws to counter the illegal dumping of foreign waste products in the Czech Republic. the move comes on the heels of a 7 million Kč ($341,797) fine filed by the state against MTR Kladno for importing such waste from Germany.
The Environment Ministry is working with several other European countries on an agreement so that “new member states won’t serve as waste disposal sites for the old, more developed member states, and the environment of the whole of Europe will be protected by all,” said Jitka Jenšovská, spokeswoman for the Czech Environmental Inspectorate.
The most recent case was discovered during a random vehicle check by a customs office in the area of Dubí, north Bohemia. Officers found a Czech driver transporting waste from Germany that looked suspicious and called the Czech Environment Inspectorate office in Ústí nad Labem. All documents implicated MTR Kladno as the transporter, Jenšovská said.
It is the second-largest fine for illegal waste importation ever imposed by the government. The firm Bau24 set the 10 million Kč record when it was fined for transferring 2,000 metric tons of garbage from Germany to Libčeves, north Bohemia.
“It was proven that MTR Kladno had illegally and fraudulently deposited more than 12,000 tons of waste [here],” Jenšovská said. That’s the equivalent of about 600 garbage trucks full of German waste.
The Czech Republic tops the list for countries receiving trash illegally, she said. However, Poland and Hungary are the destination for some thousands of tons of trash, too. Bulgaria and Romania may be next on the list of hot targets, she added.
The problem is moving deeper into Eastern Europe, agreed Jakub Kašpar, spokesman for the Environment Ministry.
Schengen fears
Beginning in May 2005, European Union rules barred Czech customs officers from inspecting the content of every truck crossing the German-Czech border. The following month, Germany passed legislation that altered dumping rules there and shut down 200 out of 330 landfills, said Jenšovská.
“So they opted for a cheaper, though fraudulent, alternative to deposit the waste — into a landfill here in the Czech Republic,” she said.
In fact, the burning of waste in the Czech Republic to cover up illegal dumping has caused massive fires authorities have struggled to quell, most recently in May. This followed last August, when police charged 30 people with illegally importing trash. They reportedly made tens of millions of crowns by dumping several thousand tons of waste onto a farm in Libčeves.
The ease of transporting trash across borders has worried some, who say the Jan. 1 implementation of the Schengen Agreement in the country, which allows for the unhindered travel of all EU citizens without passports among member states, will only aid in trash transportation.
After Schengen, the country’s open border will be about 2,000 kilometers (1,240 miles) long.
However, the Environment Ministry disputes Schengen will have any effect on increasing waste imports.
While customs officers will no longer patrol the border, they will guard against illegal dumping from inside the country, as they do now, Kašpar said.
Indeed, the amount of trash crossing the border has been decreasing since the end of 2005, when authorities clued in to the abuse of EU laws by transporters, Kašpar and Jenšovská said.
Coordination has improved between Customs Administration, the Czech Environmental Inspectorate and Czech Police, Kašpar said.
Deterrents also improved last year when President Václav Klaus approved a law to increase the maximum fine for illegal dumpers from 10 million Kč to 50 million Kč.
— Naďa Černá contributed to this report.

Riva Froymovich can be reached at rfroymovich@praguepost.com


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