ARKHANGELSK, Russia -- Authorities in Russia's northwestern region of Arkhangelsk have announced they will halt the construction of a landfill for waste from Moscow, a project that was extremely unpopular locally.
The region's economic development minister, Ivan Kulyavtsev, said on June 9 that the local government had canceled an agreement with the Tekhnopark construction company on building the landfill in the town of Shiyes, near the regional capital, Arkhangelsk.
Kulyavtsev said that the agreement was canceled after the project had been removed from the list of the most-important investment projects.
Also on June 9, the government of the Arkhangelsk region said in a statement that the decision to remove the project from the list was one of the steps to fully shutting it down.
The construction of the new landfill near Arkhangelsk has sparked numerous protests since it began in July 2018.
Local authorities said at the time that some 10.5 million tons of garbage was expected to be transferred to the site from Moscow over the next 20 years.
Some of the protests against the project in the region and adjacent Republic of Komi were violently dispersed by police.
The project was supported by the former governor of the Arkhangelsk region, Igor Orlov, who resigned in early April.
His successor, the acting governor of the region, Aleksandr Tsybulsky, has openly expressed his negative stance to the project and initiated its closure.
The acting head of the Republic of Komi, Vladimir Uiba, has also criticized the project and called for its closure.
