The Slovak Environment Ministry has announced that it wants to take responsibility for the clean-up of the contaminated site of the former Istrochem chemical plant in Bratislava, which was purchased in 2002 by the Agrofert holding, led by the incoming Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis (ANO).
The proposal will now be considered by the government. Slovak opposition politicians have criticized the plan, saying that the ministry would be bearing the cost for operations which would increase the value of Babis’s land. They pointed out that the ministry published the plan shortly after Environment Minister Tomas Taraba (SNS) met with Babis, who is of Slovak origin.
The Bratislava chemical plant, which produced artificial fibres, explosives, chemicals and plastics, was one of the biggest polluters of groundwater in the Slovak capital. An earlier study showed that Istrochem’s site contained high concentrations of substances hazardous to human health, and that decontamination would cost around 350 million euros. Representatives for the chemical plant have welcomed the government’s plans.
The Environment Ministry said that the normal procedures had failed to establish who was responsible for the environmental pollution at the chemical plant. According to the relevant legislation, in such a case, the government is supposed to decide which ministry will be in charge of the remediation of the contaminated area. According to the Slovak authorities, the pollution in question originated before 2002, i.e. before the privatisation of Istrochem, and the new owner fulfilled its obligation under the privatisation contract to invest in the development of the company, in particular in its ecology.
Representatives of Istrochem Reality told CTK that they welcomed the state’s remediation of the chemical plant, and that the Slovak government was thus fulfilling its “legal obligation to remediate areas where there is no other known source of contamination.”
“An unused industrial area will turn into a site with a value of hundreds of millions of euros, using the citizens’ money, and it will cost the landowners nothing,” said Michal Kica, a former Slovak deputy environment minister. “There are approximately 2,000 environmental burdens in Slovakia with remediation costs of more than two billion euros, but Taraba chose this one a few days after his meeting with Babis.”
Taraba and Babis, who is currently negotiating the composition of a new government after the victory of his party in the Czech parliamentary elections, met last weekend. They said they agreed, for example, on their opposition to ETS 2 emission allowances and to tightening emission standards for industry.
Kica pointed out that Taraba, after becoming minister two years ago, had pushed for the abolition of the rule that landowners should pay the state for the cost of decontaminating plots, regardless of who caused the pollution.
In 2006, the Agrofert Group incorporated Istrochem into its Duslo chemical plant in the southern Slovak town of Sala. Duslo announced the closure of its Bratislava plant this summer. Istrochem Reality, owned by Babis’s company SynBiol, owns the real estate on the premises of the Bratislava chemical plant.
