The Department of Urban Agglomeration of the LMR held the second online meeting with representatives of the Council of Europe and successful Polish associations of self-government. This time we talked with colleagues from the Upper Silesia agglomeration, which is created around the city of Katowice.
During the meeting, they discussed a situation that simultaneously affects the interests of several communities territorially close to the Lviv MTG – the state of Lake Navaria.
Thus, the initiator of the joint Ukrainian-Polish meeting – the deputy director of the city agglomeration department of the LMR, Roman Kizima, said that Lviv proposed a joint project to clean water bodies using the example of the Shchyretsky Reservoir and Lake Navaria.
Territorially, Lake Navaria is located on the territory of the Pustomytivska community. At the same time, it is in constant use through communal enterprises of the Lviv community. Instead, this lake is filled by already polluted rivers that flow through Solonkivska and Sokilnytska communities. As you know, there is no sewage system there.
“By uniting communities around a large city, as required by the principle of agglomeration, this problem can be partially solved. In Europe, this is significantly helped by the local legislation. But first, communities must take care of sewerage and drainage in their communities,” Roman Kizima emphasized.
Therefore, the main theses from the joint Ukrainian-Polish online meeting are: first, the cleaning of water bodies must begin with the sewerage of communities; secondly, joint Polish-Ukrainian projects and participation in relevant competitions are promising for Ukraine.
The participants of the online panel noted that in Ukraine, even despite 8 years of Russian aggression, the decentralization reform took place much faster than it did in Poland. During this difficult time, the Ukrainians did manage to transfer control over central level resources to local territorial units. When communities themselves decide how to develop social infrastructure, where and what to build, they control the quality of work of the local government, which they choose themselves. At the same time, the full-scale war clearly showed that groups (in the format of an unofficial agglomeration in particular) are better not only to develop, but also to recover from the consequences of the war.
The EU especially cares about the ecological component, so they are interested in ensuring that the rivers do not pollute the Baltic basin. Ukraine’s new status as a candidate for EU membership only adds new opportunities for the implementation of a number of programs and co-financing.
In Poland, monitoring the pollution of rivers with waste is helped by the local legislation. Therefore, the next step for Ukraine is to adopt the law “On Agglomeration” as soon as possible. As well as new environmental legislation that will allow communities to more effectively control the sewage system in households.