TASS, January 13. The design of three automatic materials recovery facilities (MRF) in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Region is due to be completed by 2023. Parties to a concession agreement will be announced before April, 2022, the region’s Department for Tariffs, Energy and Housing told TASS.
Earlier, TASS wrote that three solid-waste management clusters would be organized outside Salekhard, Novy Urengoi, and Muravlenko. They will include automatic materials recovery facilities, waste handling stations and temporary storage sites. The projects will be implemented in the form of a concession.
"In compliance with the concession agreement, engineering surveys and blueprints are to be completed before January 1, 2023," the department said.
According to the department’s head, Dmitry Afanasyev, the region "has organized a competition among companies wishing to enter concession agreements on solid-waste processing." The competition winners will be announced within the first quarter of 2022, he added, saying the facilities’ costs would be available after the competition is over.
Each MRF will have an annual capacity of at least 100,000 tonnes, and the exploitation term would be at least 23 years, the department said. Every facility will have shops to handle bulky waste and areas for the organic waste’s tunnel composting. The plots to store solid waste near Salekhard, Novy Urengoi and Muravlenko will be 1.78, 4.25, and 1.78 hectares respectively. Jointly they will be sufficient for 115,000 tonnes of waste. The biggest facility will be near Novy Urengoi. "These facilities will handle 100% of the solid waste, produced in the autonomous district," the department said, stressing the region would not organize waste processing due to high costs.
The MRFs will be organized under the regional part of the Ecology National Project. The work continues in cooperation with the Russian Ecology Operator.
How to remove waste from far-away districts
The region plans the three MRFs will solve fully the solid-waste management issue in communities with year-round transportation. In far-away districts, where building of materials recovery facilities is not reasonable economically, the region will organize 43 temporary storage sites. They will appear in the Purovsky, Priuralsky, Nadymsky, Yamalsky, Shuryshkarsky, Tazovsky and Krasnoselkupsky districts.
"In 2020-2021, we prepared 25 temporary storage sites," the department said. "Work on another 18 sites will continue in 2022-2024."
Waste transportation from far-away sites to the waste management plants will be organized when weather conditions allow. "In summer - by water, in winter - by snow roads," the department said.
Waste handling stations will be a midterm stage in logistics of the waste from far-away districts. Their capacities depend on the population rates and transportation options. Such stations, which will include preliminary separation, will be organized in Labutnangi, Noyabrsk, Gubinsky, Nadym, Pangoda (near Nadym), Tazovsky, Syvdarma (the Purovsky District). The construction is scheduled for 2022-2024.
Earlier, Yamal’s Governor Dmitry Artyukhov pointed to the outstanding problem of solid-waste management in far-away districts. Most settlements do not have year-round roads, which makes waste handling quite problematic.
Current waste management options
Seven landfills and five processing facilities have been organized across the region. For example, four solid-waste management plants and one processing facility work in Novy Urengoi, Tarko-Sale, Nadym, Yar-Sala and Salekhard. Additionally, 51 waste management facilities, which had been commissioned before January 1, 2019, continue working in the region.
Most landfills were organized in the 1990s, and their capacities have been practically exhausted. Some facilities do not meet modern requirements. These infrastructures will continue working until new facilities come on stream, and by 2025 they will be closed.