7 April 2020

Activists from the environmental NGO Ecoclub from Rivne, Ukraine are facing defamation charges after they raised warnings about a planned wood processing facility near the city. The group alerted the public to a host of potential negative environmental impacts the facility might have, which has started construction in the village of Horodok, in the Rivne region, in Ukraine’s northwest. The charges against Ecoclub were filed by ‘TECHNOPRIVOD INVEST GROUP’ LLC, which is owned by  Kronospan, an Austrian company with a particularly controversial track record. The first court hearing is scheduled for Monday, April 13...In February 2020, the regional authorities approved the Horodok facility’s  environmental impact assessment (EIA), but an analysis released by Ecoclub found Kronospan’s factory could exceed the allowed levels of formaldehyde concentration in the air. The environmentalists also raised concerns that toxic waste from the plant could be sent to local municipal landfill and that the EIA lacks a study of alternatives...