City Garbage Plan Meets Hot Resistance

Late last month, Mayor Yury Luzhkov quietly signed a decree ordering the construction of six new incinerators inside the city limits before 2012. Together with the four existing facilities, they will burn over 3 million tons of garbage per year, operating in every district of the city except the center. The plan is estimated to cost 60 billion rubles, or $2.5 billion, and it will place huge smokestacks near some of Moscow's greenest areas. Moscow already ranks among the world's most polluted cities. In 2007, Mercer Human Resource Consulting listed Moscow as the world's 14th-dirtiest city, worse than New Delhi but slightly better than ecological disaster zones like Mexico City and Baku.