An employee of a public utility who let the river pollution with effluents happen in March 2020 was fined only for 10 thousand rubles. The Prosecutor's office of the Starodub district of Bryansk Oblast announced this on June 4.
The Prosecutor's office found that the chief foreman of sewer networks had violated the rules of sewer disposal and "fitted" a drain from the enterprise into the sewer without effluent treatment. It led to the Babinets river’s contamination.
The extent to which the river was polluted is not specified.
Activists of Navalny's headquarters in Bryansk Oblast believe that the Starodub district is on the verge of an environmental disaster. Local enterprises allegedly discharge effluent and industrial waste directly into the river because of critical condition of the district's treatment facilities. The activists claim that the rivers now resemble “a mixture from public sewer, mixed with curd and cheese waste.”