REPORT A Natura 2000 Protected Area on the Edge of Mangalia Became a Garbage Dump: “I Bring the Garbage with Big Cars, From the Companies!”. The Ministry of the Environment knows Since 2020

Mlastina Hergheliai is located on the seaward side of the road, and Obanu Mare and Movilei Cave, on the other side, which overlooks a valley, where Balta Inului is located, with the gloss dotted by a few foxes.

“A remarkable ecosystem”

In the cave, where public access is prohibited, 43 species of invertebrates live, of which 32 are endemic to the site. “The ecosystem is remarkable for its high biodiversity,” notes a 2020 Ministry of Environment note. Birds, reptiles, rodents, insects, Sarmato-Pontic bushes and other plant species are listed in the document’s appendix.

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Around the entrance to the cave are geomorphological formations called obanes – low plateaus with swamps and lakes from the Black Sea area. Among the vertebrates, the European poplar can be found here, the document from the ministry claims. “There is no information on the population size of the European poplar in the site, this will be defined in a period of 3 years”.

The Ministry of the Environment has known since 2020

I didn’t meet any popans when I passed through the reservation. Or, if I met, I did not recognize him. A living thing must go through considerable mutations to survive in the huge garbage dump that stretches across the protected area. The inhabitants of Popandă probably no longer had the patience, like bears, to be counted by the Ministry of the Environment and turned into maidan dogs, sniffing without conviction what’s new through the multi-colored piles that start where the houses end.

“No, no, people don’t throw anymore! He banned them!”, a local says firmly, the strength being in the glass. In the rain, the only signs of life are at the neighborhood bar. “They bring the garbage with big machines, where they break, where they dig, I don’t know.” Another local approves and adds that the “big cars” do not belong to Mangalia City Hall. “They are cars from companies. They are big rabes (no – dump trucks, after the name of the Hungarian manufacturer Raba), they come from the morning from 7 o’clock until the evening”. “And it also ruins the roads!”, adds the first local.

The roads are not a miracle in the north of Mangalia, where the sensitive eyes of tourists do not blink. Mayor Radu Cristian, in his third mandate, announced in February that the “long-awaited paving in the Colonisti housing district” will begin, with funds from the Government, through the Saligny Program.

The Ministry of the Environment has known about the garbage in the protected area for almost four years. The cited note dates from August 2020 and records the following: “The vulnerability of the Obanu Mare site and La Movile Cave results from the fact that in its immediate vicinity, the locals of Mangalia store significant amounts of household and construction waste. Agricultural and grazing activities are carried out in the vicinity”.

In the continuation of the document, the Ministry of the Environment emphasizes the importance of taking some measures, so that the site is better preserved, without specifying what these measures would be.

“The uncontrolled storage of some inert waste was found”

Three years have passed and the litters have continued their fight for territory with the steppe grasses and the hypothetical Spermophilus Citellus, the catalog name of the European poplar.

The Environmental Guard did not respond to Libertatea newspaper’s questions about the subject. The National Agency for Natural Protected Areas (ANANP) informed us that, “in order to verify the aspects reported by the daily newspaper Libertatea”, it carried out a control in the area, together with representatives of the Dobrogea Coastal Water Basin Administration and the National Agency for Fisheries and Aquaculture .

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“The existence of an open weir has been found, which favors the discharge of waters from the Herghelia Swamp into the Black Sea and damage to the protected area. Household waste was found both in the water and on the shore of the lake. Also, at the southern end of the lake, in the immediate vicinity of the protected natural area, towards the Saturn resort, it was observed the uncontrolled storage of inert waste (fragments of concrete, masonry, etc.), affecting the grassy vegetation in this area of ​​the area protected natural areas”, states the document signed by the president of ANANP, Vasile Cârnariu.

As a result of these findings, the Agency sent an address to the Environmental Guard – Constanța County Commissionerate, but “up to this date, the steps taken to resolve the ANANP request have not been sent”.

Mangalia City Hall, called to pick up the trash

The agency requested the Mangalia City Hall “to collect the waste and bring the affected land to its original state”. This request was not properly received either, as the garbage has not moved, for now.

“For ten or five years!”, the locals answer, when you ask them how long garbage has been thrown in the area. “Now he has arranged a little more, but if you came two or three years ago, it was a disaster! Now he arranged more, spread more, brought more earth, put over them, buried them”.

People know what the authorities ignore, and researchers are afraid to investigate: in addition to the obane, in the relief and in the geological structure of the Natura 2000 site on the outskirts of Mangalia, new layers and new formations have appeared. Curb layers, plastic bags, car debris, tires, old clothes, asphalt chips. A layer of dirt, a layer of trash: “It levels out there. Always. As much as possible, heap by heap, then he comes with that excavator”.

Rumors of a fishery

People also talk about a traffic policeman who lives in the neighborhood and who “allows” only big cars to leave trash, not the locals. “He wants to make a stretch there (ed. – on the shore of the lake), to make it summer, for tourists to come to the pond, to fish, to a barbecue. Kind of like a fishery, you know?”.

A plausible projection. No ecosystem without its predators.

Clouds on top, yellow mud on the ground, a mud that sticks to the wheels and soles like dough, Obanu Mare – Peştera Movilei does not look like a frequented area at all. The little girl in you whispers to you to hurry up and you avoid her at a sanitary distance.

With three institutions involved in its administration – the City Hall, ANANP, the Ministry of the Environment, four, if we include the Environmental Guard, although its activity generally takes place beyond the horizon of events -, the area in the north of Mangalia endures as a Natura 2000 site. And another one with a real chance of becoming a Natura 2300 site.

Big-eyed, small-mouthed, green-skinned archaeologists will come here with shovels and dig up fossils from curbs, toilet lids, deck chairs, umbrella spokes, barbecue soot, and other traces of past civilizations. And in the notes sent for approval to the intergalactic forums, these archaeologists, suffering from obvious superiority complexes, will conclude that people ate fish, but it did them no good.

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The Climate Change section is supported by the European Climate Foundation. ECF was not involved in any way in the editorial process and is not responsible for the views expressed in the texts appearing within the section.

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