Press Release, August 19, 2013

Candidate for Moscow Mayor inspected the construction of a tube station near Bitsevsky forest in the south of Moscow on August 18. The apprehensions about the breach of the environmental protection legislation during the construction were confirmed.

The residents showed YABLOKO leader and the activists an air pit which was supposed to be built on the inside of the tunnel, but was built on the outside. Therefore a part of the forest was cut down. Initially the tube was planned to be built deep under the ground, but  for the cost reasons it wasn’t built very deep. Half of the construction work takes place on the specially protected nature reservation.

The residents claim that there were alternative places for the construction of a tube station and the building in Bitsevsky forest, the “lungs” of Moscow, is unacceptable. They also said that the results of the public hearings were falsified.
Special technologies, which do not suppose cutting the trees down or using machines in the forest,  must be used at the construction of tube stations. Kazansky Metrostroi (the organization concerned with the building of underground railways), which supposedly could do this type of the construction, received the project without a tender. But the facts say for themselves. The temporary acting Mayor Sergei Sobyanin’s right-hand man Marat Khusnullin officially admitted that the construction was in fact carried according to a different project.

The activists had to take measures to enter the building site as the security guards tried to prevent them from doing it.

A lot of damage to the nature of Bitsevsky forest was done. Moscow Department for Environment Protection allowed to cut down the trees. A kilometre-long concrete route was paved through the forest. The machines carry the building materials along this road without a permission.

27 million roubles (about 613.915 euro) from the Moscow budget will be spent on the construction, though the initial price was 13, 5 million roubles (295.588 euro). This means that every kilometre of the tube line through the forest costs more than a line in the city centre.

Sergei Mitrokhin said that “the environment is taken away from the Muscovites.  This process started in Luzhkov’s time and carries on in Sobyanin’s time. The officials and oligarchs, who want to build elite housing for themselves in Bitsevsky forest, need this tube station in the first place. When I become the Mayor, I’ll return Moscow to the Muscovites.

YABLOKO leader promised to investigate the case and help to protect Bitsevsky forest form the barbarian construction.