An illegal dump has formed on land owned by the Ministry of Defense near Mykolaiv.

Near Mykolaiv, an illegal dump has formed on land owned by the Ministry of Defense.

An unauthorized dump has emerged near the village of Kalynivka in the Mykolaiv region on territory that belongs to the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine.

This was reported to Suspilne by Lyudmyla Melnyk, head of the housing and communal services department of the Voskresenske village council.

Trash is being discarded here from passing vehicles, contaminating the soil and groundwater with toxic substances. As of February 9, 2025, specialists are searching for solutions to this issue.

"We have occasionally conducted investigations. It turned out that vehicles came directly from the city, brought waste, unloaded it, and that was it," the official stated.

The community tried to clean up the debris on its own, but people continued to fill the dump.

It is impossible to allocate funds from the local budget for cleaning the site, as the land does not belong to the community, Lyudmyla Melnyk explains. According to her, there used to be a military unit on this 36-hectare area, and the land is officially classified as state property.

"I don’t remember what year it was. However, when the unit closed, everything valuable was taken away, and people left — there was nowhere to work. The area has remained abandoned ever since," Lyudmyla Melnyk recounts.

To gain the right to maintain the territory, in 2020, the official appealed to the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine with a request to transfer the land to the community. However, her request was denied.

The illegal dump is detrimental to the ecological situation, as noted by Svetlana Beshevetz, a representative of the State Environmental Inspection of the Southwestern District. The dump accumulates organic and plastic waste, scrap metal — whose harmful substances leach into the soil and groundwater. It’s important to remember that a garbage dump provides an ideal environment for rodents, which are carriers of infectious diseases.

"Furthermore, if this dump catches fire — whether intentionally or accidentally — toxic substances are also released into the air," Beshevetz explained.

As of February 9, specialists are addressing the issues and searching for methods to resolve this environmental problem.