Caucasus: Feb/Mar '10

Georgian villagers have thanked IWPR for an investigation that triggered moves to resolve a serious local environmental and health problem.

The sewage system of the village of Jinvali had been broken since 1987, and raw sewage poured across the road into a nearby orchard. From the fields, it would trickle into the Bodorni reservoir, which is 45 kilometres from Tbilisi.

Now work has started on relaying sewage pipes and the impact has already been felt.

Activists who alerted IWPR’s Tea Topuria to the problem were concerned the pollution could harm residents of the capital, but the villagers had more immediate concerns and were delighted by the article’s impact.

“A couple of weeks ago they brought tractors and cleaned the channel down which the sewage was draining into the Bodorni reservoir. You can’t compare what we have now with what we had before. I am very grateful to whoever it was who managed to get this problem solved,” said Gela Gogishvili, a local resident whose fields were covered in sewage every time it rained.

While researching the story, Topuria asked the environment ministry to comment on the situation in Jinvali, and as a result, a representative visited the village to check.

“As a result of the inspection it was confirmed that the sewage system has fallen completely into disrepair, and sewage water and faecal masses have poured onto land reserved for agricultural use belonging to the local residents. The water then pours into the river Aragvi,” the ministry told IWPR.

It said it had informed local officials about the village’s problems.

“If the local authorities do not resolve the problem in the near future, they will be fined in accordance with environmental law,” it said.

Local residents, however, said they doubted the local government had the resources to solve the problem entirely. They said they were preparing an appeal to the central government in the hope it would allocate more resources to them.

“They have already changed the sewage pipes in our area, and they’ve promised to do so in the whole village. No one worried about us before, about what conditions people were living in, but finally the government has decided to resolve this problem. Thanks be to God, because life had become intolerable, especially in summer,” said Lali Buchukuri, who lives in a Jinvali apartment block that has been regularly surrounded by sewage.

It was not entirely clear why officials had not taken action before IWPR investigated, but residents were glad they had.

“It is good that they have at last remembered us. I probably won’t get a decent harvest this season, but may God grant that this problem is now solved once and for all,” farmer Vano Kashiashvili said.