Inčukalns sulfuric acid tar ponds can still be found in the List of Contaminated Sites maintained by the Latvian Meteorology Centre among a total of 253 dangerously polluted sites in Latvia, and will remain there for at least another 30 years, but the cleaning has been officially declared complete.
The builders cleaned the northern pond last year, where tar had already been filled with sand in Soviet times. The struggle with the southern pond (on the other side of the Tallinn highway), where tar was in a liquid and semi-liquid form, took longer, but now new grass has been sown there too on the cleaned ground. At the end of last week, the officials together with the builders posed against the background of the former pond. Praised each other for the wonderful cooperation, excellent work and mutual trust. However, it should be reminded here that the officials are happy only about the last stage of the project after 2016 - when the builders' tandem of Skonto Būve and the German MUEG was replaced by the general partnership Inčukalns Eko. The responsible officials on the state side were also replaced. In general, the large EU project “2009LV161PR004 - Historically contaminated sites ‘Inčukalns acid tar ponds’ remediation works” is characterized by quite opposite features.
Extreme mistrust, the inability of partners to cooperate and immeasurable greed: this is what characterizes the 11-year-long saga of tar ponds.
Of the 20 million euros initially contracted in 2010, the project has seen a dizzying rise in costs, with a final amount of 57.8 million euros. However, this amount does not include legal costs. The State Environmental Service (SES) is still in a legal process with Skonto Būve, which objectively could not deal with the complex remediation project, but did not want to give it away to others. The contract with Skonto Būve was terminated in 2015, and the company sued the SES in court for lost income and it will again be a matter of millions of euros, as skilled law firms are fighting for money on both sides.
However, it would not be right to attribute all the blame for dawdling, incompetence and price increase to Skonto Būve, because the commissioner also acted inexplicably and even harmful from the point of view of the goal to be achieved. For example, in 2013, when announcing a tender for remediation works, the Ministry of Environmental Protection and Regional Development prohibited applicants from taking tar samples. Entrepreneurs asked for just 200 liters for analysis, but the tender commission said no. Well, then the applicants went and named some work costs, not really knowing what substance they would have to work with. It was only when the contract was concluded and work started that the volumes turned out to be incomparably higher, but the substance to be handled - more aggressive and difficult to work with. In this context, the increase in costs was inevitable, regardless of who would do the work.
Of course, when calculating the money drowned in the tar pond, one can narrowly look at only the reports submitted to the European Union. But it can also be evaluated more extensively, and then the amount spent grows even higher. In fact, the fight against the post-war practice of dumping refinery waste in pits dug into the forest began in the 1980s. Various experimental purification devices at that time were destroyed in sulfuric tar, but nothing worthwhile came from it. In the already independent Latvia, money was generously spent on all kinds of experience exchange trips and writing projects. For experimental tar skimming, but it did not decrease the amount of tar. And then came the big EU project, which should theoretically have been completed in 2015. Be that as it may, it is finally done now, and even if a few more million euros will be spent, for example, on lengthy litigation or in the coming years to monitor the state of the environment, this is a major victory. In the forests of Inčukalns, two extremely dangerous sources of pollution were eliminated, which traveled to the Gauja with groundwater and further to the sea. Although these processes will still continue underground for some time to come, the greatest danger has been eliminated. All the tar has been removed, mixed with wood chips and delivered for incineration to the Brocēni cement plant.
Thus, it can be considered that the 70-year-long largest environmental poisoning experiment in the history of Latvia has come to an end.
FOR REFERENCE
SIA Skonto Būve amended and supplemented its claim several times, requesting from the State Environmental Service of the Republic of Latvia a total of EUR 11,555,198.70.
The State Environmental Service has filed a counterclaim, requesting the court to recover from SIA Skonto Būve damages in the amount of EUR 12,509,077.82, which have been created as a result of inadequate performance and non-performance of the contract.