EVENT

Court ruling protects Southern Buh’s rapids

The Board of the Kyiv District Administrative Court has passed judgment in the case of the NGO Environment People Law (EPL) vs. the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine, in regard to Cabinet Resolution No. 841 “On the Allocation of Plots to be Held in Permanent Possession.” The court ruling is in favor of the EPL claim and abolishes the government’s decision. The abovementioned cabinet resolution allowed the national company Enerhoatom to take permanent possession of 27 hectares of the precious landscape park Hranitno-stepove Pobuzhia (Mykolaiv oblast), in order to build the Oleksandrivske water reservoir. Enerhoatom experts believe this reservoir is necessary to keep the Tashlyk Hydroelectric Pumped Storage Power Plant ticking. However, flooding these lands will mean burying unique historic sites, like the Buh lower rapids, the Cossack Hard Island, and Red Book plants. This case had been shelved by various court rulings since 2006, until it was revived by the Supreme Administrative Court. The Board of the Kyiv District Administrative Court heard EPL’s statements claiming numerous breaches of the Land Code when allowing Enerhoatom to take permanent possession of these territories. The case is now up to the Appellate Court. The big question is whether it will reaffirm the first instance’s ruling.

European field hockey championship in Ukraine

The Men’s EuroHockey Nations Championship II, to be held in the capital of Podillia on August 8 to 14, 2011, will be attended by the national teams of Ukraine, Austria, Scotland, Wales, the Czech Republic, Poland, Sweden, and Belarus. Mr. Steve Catton, the European Hockey Federation competitions manager, has visited Vinnytsia to examine the readiness of the city’s stadiums and hotels in which sportsmen will be staying. He also met the management and organizing committee of the competition. To successfully hold the championship, local authorities have to do a lot of top-notch work in a short period of time, for which 2.8 million hryvnias will be allotted from the national and local budgets. This will certainly provide a boost to Ukraine’s standing on the European field hockey stage.

Roshen invests 50 million hryvnias into power generation

Roshen, Ukraine’s largest confectionary corporation, has invested 50 million hryvnias in the construction of a 110/10 kV 50 MW electrical substation in the vicinity of its second confectionery plant in Vinnytsia. On November 11, Roshen’s founder Petro Poroshenko’s press service informed that this construction project is expected to be finished in early December. The new substation will supply power to all the existing confectioneries and those being built, as well as Vinnytsia’s dairy factory. Roshen plans to finish building Vinnytsia’s confectionery plant toward the end of March 2012, and the dairy factory — toward the end of 2013.

New economical metro railcar in Kremenchuk

JSC Kriukivsky Railway Car Building Works (Poltava region) will be able to offer a metro railcar with induction motor drive to its customers in 2011, Volodymyr Prykhodko, the head of the supervisory board, informed journalists on November 9. According to him, the advantage of such a railcar is a 25 percent reduction of energy usage. “We have already built such a metro railcar. At the events, which were devoted to the 50th anniversary of the Kyiv metro, the railcar was exhibited. We showed it to the president and the representatives of the CIS and Eastern Europe metro industry,” he said. Prykhodko added that the induction motor drive railcar is to undergo testing in the near future.