In April of this year, the FBRK editorial team contacted the Department for Land Resource Management of the Akmola Region (DLRM) with a request to investigate violations of environmental legislation at two different water bodies. A month and a half later, the department sent three completely identical replies in response to two requests concerning the Astana (Vyacheslav) Reservoir and one concerning the Ishim River. The Department effectively examined only one application, after which it used an identical reply for the other two requests, which had entirely different content. We examine how environmental control works in the country.
Over several months, the FBRK editorial team consistently studied the situation, analysed the data, and monitored the activities of entities affecting the condition of these critically important water bodies. Naturally, the problems in each case have their own nuances. For instance, the Astana Reservoir suffers from extensive agricultural activity, while the Ishim suffers more from the extraction of common mineral resources in close proximity to its banks.
On 7 April 2025, our editorial team sent three different requests to the Department for Land Resource Management of the Akmola Region, asking for inspections to be carried out for each of the sites. We only received replies on 23 May — after a month and a half of 'inspections'. And although the FBRK editorial team awaited the results with particular trepidation, the department replied to all three requests in an absolutely identical manner. The Department effectively inspected (or did it?) only the plots along the Ishim, then copied the same reply for the Astana Reservoir.
It turns out that the Department ignored the specific request — to conduct an inspection into the facts of environmental legislation violations and provide a legal assessment of the actions of responsible persons, which, incidentally, is the Department's primary task. Instead, the DLRM limited itself to a formal document check and redirected the matter to another body.
Moreover, the Department directly stated that, according to Article 25 of the Code 'On Subsoil and Subsoil Use', conducting subsoil use operations on water fund land territories is prohibited; however, it drew no conclusions regarding the legality (or illegality) of granting land plots in the water protection zone for mineral extraction. On one hand, the Department asserts that 'land plots in the water protection strips of water bodies may be granted for temporary use'; on the other, it cites the legal norm on the prohibition of subsoil use on water fund lands. This contradiction, as one might guess, was neither resolved nor explained.
At the same time, the Department chose not to report whether water protection zone restrictions were taken into account in the land documents, or whether inspections were carried out regarding compliance with the designated purpose of the plots. The DLRM forwarded the materials to another agency without specifying a timeframe for receiving results. The Department did not exercise its powers regarding state control over land use, limiting itself to studying documents without an on-site inspection of the actual condition of the disputed plots.
This whole story unfolds against the backdrop of a systemic crisis in environmental control in the country. The absence of a single body bearing full responsibility for the comprehensive condition of water bodies creates a favourable environment for the private interests of a small group of companies to dominate over public ones. Control functions are blurred across various agencies, each responsible only for its own narrow area of work.
One gets the impression that the existing permitting system operates on the principle of 'every man for himself'. Permits for site development are issued one by one, without any assessment of the cumulative impact of dozens of quarries on the river's ecosystem. No one calculates the cumulative effect — what happens when sand, gravel, and construction materials are extracted simultaneously from one water body, while agriculture develops along its banks.
The story of the department's identical replies is just the tip of the iceberg. It shows how formalised and detached from reality environmental control has become. When officials respond to requests about different environmental problems with a single template text, it speaks not only to the poor quality of work of a particular agency, but also to a systemic failure of the entire state control machine.
The FBRK editorial team has sent official complaints regarding the department's work, highlighting critical shortcomings in its approach to inspections. Given the month-and-a-half timeframe for processing requests, the question arises: what kind of work was actually carried out by the department, if the result was the distribution of identical replies to requests that were substantially different?