For a decade, authorities of Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan, have been elaborating plans to solve the city landfill problem, which is called an environmental catastrophe by ecologists.
Back in 2013, the EBRD and the European Union allocated 22 million Euro for the construction of a modern landfill, waste sorting facility, and for the improvement of the situation. Over a decade later, the only tangible results have been new garbage bins and cleaning equipment, while millions of Kyrgyz som have been spent on loan repayments and penalties.
Towering piles of unsorted waste, some of them smouldering. Crows circle overhead, searching for food, while rats and stray dogs scurry on the ground. Hundreds of children and adults work here daily, searching for scrap metal and used bottles.
This is not a scene from a post-apocalyptic sci-fi film. This is a municipal sanctioned landfill on the northern outskirts of Bishkek, just 10-15 kilometres away from the downtown. It was established in 1972 and was supposed to last only for 10 years.
This is the only landfill in Bishkek and all waste is dumped here. Absolutely everything: household waste, medical waste, chemical waste, construction waste, petroleum products, and much more.
“Aside from medical, veterinary, and contaminated food waste from markets, other types of hazardous household waste are left unidentified and are collected with the general household waste,” according to a 2012 environmental and social impact assessment prepared by order of the Bishkek Mayor’s Office.
It also notes that, despite the fact that medical, veterinary waste, and food waste from markets are pre-sorted in organizations, in the end they are still collected and dumped at the landfill with all the other garbage.
The landfill has continued to expand over the years, and there are no plans to close it. Now, according to the official data of the Mayor’s Office of Bishkek, it exceeds 46.5 hectares – large than Vatican City, but the waste problem persists.
During parliamentary discussions in December 2022, Deputy Mirlan Samyikozho stated that about 300 garbage trucks pass through the landfill daily. According to him, over the past ten years, the landfill has grown from 45 to 75 hectares, increasing its area by approximately 40 football fields. As the landfill continues to expand, so do concerns about its potential negative impact on public health and the environment.
The greatest risks are borne by the growing number of residents living right on its outskirts. In recent decades, nine residential areas have formed around the landfill, three of which are located in the sanitary zone of the landfill. Thousands of internal migrants, who have come to the capital in search of a better life, live there. These are people without permanent jobs who earn a living at the landfill.
Mirlan, a father of four, lives in a small clay house just a five-minute walk from the rat-infested piles of garbage. With a weathered face and calloused hands, he says he bought his property because it was the only affordable option for his family, and thoughts of health risks took a backseat.
“Of course, it is dangerous, but we live here because of despair,” said Mirlan. “You cannot buy a land for 150,000 [som] (1,770 dollars) anywhere else.”
“We are not here by choice. Everyone here is struggling,” said another resident of the residential area, who declined to give her name.
Her family seized a plot of land back in 2000, built a house, and works at the landfill.
For comparison, the minimum monthly wage in Kyrgyzstan in January 2023 was 2,337 som (27 dollars) – three times lower than the subsistence minimum of the same year (7,681 som – 89 dollars). The average salary, of course, is several times higher, but according to official data, in 2023 more than 2.1 million people lived below the poverty line, and another 1.4 million lived in nearly the same conditions – together, this is half of the country’s entire population.
In addition to providing affordable land, the landfill even provides work for those who are desperate enough. If you need money, you can always search the garbage for metal and plastic and sell it to intermediaries who will take it to private recycling points. In this way, local residents can earn a few hundred som a day.
“When the money runs out, there is no need to ask anyone for help. You can go to the landfill and earn something. You can collect bottles, plastic, metal — anything you find. You don’t have to carry it anywhere, they accept it right there, you just take the money and go back home. Sometimes I even leave the children and go there myself,” said Aigul, a mother of many children.
Hundreds of people earn their living this way, constantly or periodically. Mostly, they work without any protective equipment – you don’t think about masks and gloves when you’re earning every som with such hard labour just to feed your family.
Environmental catastrophe
This is how ecologists have called the garbage heaps near the capital. Although it is called a sanctioned landfill or even a sanitary or garbage dump, this place is not equipped with any system to protect the soil from hazardous waste. The garbage has long risen above sea level, and the smell spreads throughout the area, reaching the city.
“What we call landfills in our country de jure, do not meet any parameters de facto: neither epidemiological, nor sanitary, or ecological. These are simply legalized dumps,” said Vlad Ushakov, an ecologist and expert of the EcoWorld project.
Apart from the garbage smell, there is also the smell of methane, a gas released by waste. Methane is a greenhouse gas that contributes to climate change. According to the UN Environment Programme, this gas alone accounts for at least a quarter of the impact on today’s global warming.
“If you go [to the landfill] now, you’ll smell these methane-forming gases, rotten eggs, and sulphur miles away. Ideally, there should be special pipes to vent the smell,” Ushakov said.
Methane triggers spontaneous fires that break out across the landfill, creating a caustic haze. The wind disperses this into nearby residential areas and beyond.
Environmental activist Dmitry Vetoshkin said that the smoke from smouldering garbage creates a “toxic cocktail” that residents have to inhale every day, to a greater or lesser extent, depending on their distance from the landfill.
The activist call it a “toxic cocktail” for a reason. Garbage in Bishkek is not sorted before it ends up in the landfill. Thus, it contains not only household waste, but also chemical, biological, and other types of waste.
“Our country does not have separate waste collection, in particular, there is no collection of hazardous waste. This includes pharmaceutical components, old pills, and mercury-containing substances – old thermometers, fluorescent lamps,” the ecologist explained.
Although measurements every day, Bishkek from time to time tops the ranking of the Swiss company IQAir for the worst air quality in the world. In recent months, air pollution in Bishkek has reached levels classified as “very unhealthy” and “hazardous.” While activists believe that the main causes of pollution are the growing number of cars and unplanned development, the landfill also contributes to the problem.
Not only the air is being poisoned, but also the soil. The landfill is located in Chui Valley in an area with a high groundwater level.
“There is also a toxic cocktail of substances here that mix chaotically and, through precipitation, seep into groundwater and reservoirs,” said Vetoshkin.
Water, soil, and, consequently, products grown on this land and sold on local markets are being poisoned.
Sky-high plans, waste of money, and criminal cases
Authorities understand that the problem with the landfill is acute and have announced a variety of initiatives to address it. Some small projects have been successful: the city has installed new trash containers and sites for them, purchased cleaning equipment, and opened a waste recycling centre. But this has changed nothing globally.
For many years, authorities have repeatedly announced plans to build modern enterprises for sorting and recycling waste, which would help to significantly reduce the impact on the environment. Agreements and memoranda were signed, investors promised to invest millions of dollars, but everything remained on paper.
One such project is “Solid Waste Management”. The European Union and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) gave Kyrgyzstan 22 million euros for it: half in the form of a loan and the other half as a grant.
The bulk of the money was to be spent on closing and reclaiming the existing landfill and building a new landfill. According to the plan, the new landfill should be designed to prevent fires and the ingress of hazardous effluents into the soil, as well as have the ability to sort waste for recycling and separate hazardous waste for disposal. In addition, a system is provided for collecting and utilizing biogas.
The project would have been a real salvation for the capital city, but delays, corruption scandals, and criminal cases have occurred during the project.
Problems arose in the very beginning. The initial agreement was signed back in 2013, but it was not ratified by the parliament until 2015, which was a mandatory condition. Despite this, interest on the loan began to accrue. In response to the editorial office’s inquiry, the Audit Chamber replied that even before any work on the project began in January 2016, the city had already paid 38.9 thousand Euro as interest on the loan.
From the same response to the inquiry, it follows that two years later, due to missed deadlines for the project implementation, the EBRD charged Kyrgyzstan an additional 102 thousand Euro as a commission for unused funds. The project was implemented very slowly, and penalty charges grew, including for late loan payments.
Meanwhile, in Kyrgyzstan, inspections and audits were conducted, overspending was detected, and criminal cases were initiated.
Thus, the municipal enterprise Tazalyk, which translates from Kyrgyz as “cleanliness,” was repeatedly accused of unjustified expenses. According to the Audit Chamber, between 2016 and 2020, the company spent four times more on depreciation than it should have.
Prosecutors accused Tazalyk of paying unjustified bonuses to executives and overcharging for services to government agencies. But that is not all. The company’s relationship with its partner organization, the Bishkek Sanitary Landfill (BSP) – a municipal enterprise created specifically to manage the landfill – turned into a real financial disaster.
By 2020, BSP was out of funds. Two criminal cases were opened against the former director of the Bishkek Sanitary Landfill, Bolot Asanaliev – for abuse of office and under Articles 304 “Water pollution” and 306 “Land degradation”. According to the response of the Prosecutor General’s Office to CABAR.asia, both cases were submitted to the district courts of Bishkek.
In total, the prosecutor’s office initiated six criminal cases related to the implementation of the EBRD project. Among the accused are the former mayor of Bishkek, Albek Ibraimov, and his adviser, Almira Ginyatullina, who supervised the project. They are both on the run. According to the Prosecutor General’s Office, charges have been brought against them in absentia, and the investigation is being conducted by the GKNB.
Big money – big problems
The primary expenditure of the project was designated for a new landfill. The plan was to allocate 7.5 million Euro for it. According to the initial loan agreement, both the construction of the new landfill and the reclamation of the old one were scheduled for completion by the end of 2016. Eight years have passed since then, and waste is still being dumped in the same old location.
The new sanitary landfill was constructed at the end of October 2023.
“The new landfill will significantly improve public utilities, air quality in the city, and help Bishkek become more environmentally friendly,” said Marilyn Josefson, the European Union Ambassador to Kyrgyzstan.
However, Nurlan Zhumaliev, director of the Bishkek Sanitary Landfill, told Shaman TV that the new landfill has not yet been commissioned.
The reasons for the delay in commissioning, the expected commissioning date, and the status of the waste sorting plant remain unclear. The mayor’s office has declined to give interviews to the editorial staff without an explanation.
A global problem
The Bishkek landfill is just one of over 400 in the country. The situation is similar everywhere – a massive pile of garbage in a pit, without any isolation from the soil and without methane venting systems.
Landfills occupy over 600 hectares of land, which is a third of the Chui region. 82 per cent of this territory is agricultural land intended for growing crops or raising livestock. Instead, the soil and air in these areas are constantly polluted.
“Consumption waste is, in most cases, hazardous waste that contains toxic substances that pose an immediate or potential threat to human health or the environment,” according to an analysis of waste disposal sites in Kyrgyzstan, prepared by the UN Environment Programme, government agencies, and activists.
The construction of a new Bishkek landfill, the closure of the old one, and its reclamation were supposed to be the first precedent and a showcase of how to address landfill problems in the country. When exactly the project will be completed is not clear. Currently, work is underway to reclaim the old landfill, but even this is fraught with challenges.
Unpromising forecasts
As part of the reclamation process, they were supposed to construct methane vents, cover the waste with a layer of clay, followed by fertile soil, and transform the area into agricultural land and a forest belt.
So far, they have limited themselves to a layer of clay, which helped extinguish the largest landfill fire last May. This fire had been burning continuously for over 10 years. The blaze was so massive that its smoke could be seen even on satellite images.
While this significantly reduced air pollution in the capital, it did not entirely solve the problem. According to activists, it took at least eight years for the local government to take this step, but even this could be in vain if the landfill is not closed and waste disposal is not stopped soon.
Since methane vents were not built, gases continue to accumulate within the waste piles and smoulder. Because the landfill has not been closed, waste is already being slowly dumped on top of the clay layer. This waste will eventually begin to smoulder as well.
According to Vlad Ushakov, if the landfill is not closed, sooner or later we’ll have another large-scale fire, and we’ll have to start all over again.
“If we continue to dump everything into the old landfill, it will continue to smoulder and the fire will spread, expanding the smouldering area. We’ll end up right back where we started,” the ecologist said.