Billion-Crown Landfill Scandal in Ostrava Closed With No One Guilty — Ministry Steps In

A four-year investigation into a major environmental scandal in Ostrava has ended without anyone being held responsible. In late June, the Czech Ministry of the Environment closed the case concerning the alleged illegal dumping of hundreds of thousands of tons of construction waste at the Heřmanice slag heap — one of the largest coal spoil tips in Central Europe.

Back in 2021, inspectors from the Ministry of Industry found chunks of asphalt, brick, ceramic tile and wiring buried beneath the surface of the massive, hundred-hectare heap — instead of the construction rubble that was supposedly deposited there. At the time, the inspection's conclusion was unambiguous: "a critical failure of the monitored site."

The heap has been smouldering from within for years, constantly emitting smoke and an acrid odour, and it sits next to a dump of highly toxic sludge. To prevent the underground fire from spreading, the state enterprise Diamo commissioned the construction of a so-called air barrier wall — an artificial trench 440 metres long, 40 metres deep and up to 150 metres wide. The Ostrava-based company Ridera Bohemia was contracted to fill the trench with 568,000 tons of material.

That is precisely where suspicions arose: instead of quality rubble meeting state standards, the wall allegedly received untreated demolition waste from construction sites — reportedly with the tacit approval of Diamo's management. Earlier estimates suggested that removing this waste from the heap could cost around one billion crowns.

Following the scandal, the ministry replaced the entire leadership of Diamo's Ostrava branch, and the company filed a police complaint against an unknown person — effectively targeting Ridera Bohemia and two former managers. A year later, however, police found no evidence of either fraud or illegal waste handling, and passed the case to the Czech Environmental Inspectorate (ČIŽP) for administrative proceedings.

This spring, the case was unexpectedly taken over by the higher-level Ministry of the Environment — at the request of the suspected company itself. Within just two months, the ministry concluded that Ridera Bohemia had done nothing wrong. "There is not a single piece of evidence of the accused's guilt in this case," states the ministry's 12-page decision from late June.

The ministry criticised two expert assessments that had spoken against the company, pointing to flawed methodology — in particular, the experts had failed to measure whether the imported material actually met the required standard. The ministry also accepted the company's argument that several years had passed between the filling of the wall and the inspections, during which time, theoretically, anyone could have "contaminated" the heap.

At the same time, the ministry itself acknowledges the case is legally and factually complex. Yet it also criticised the inspectorate for having handled it without resolution since 2023, even though the law requires a decision within 60 days. By comparison, in a case involving illegal construction-waste handling during road construction in the Plzeň Region, the inspectorate began work in 2018 and only issued a final fine ruling three years later.

The new head of ČIŽP, Pavel Straka, appointed by Minister Igor Červený in June, has additionally halted further studies into the composition of the heap — including commissioned drilling and sample analysis that had been carried out for the inspectorate by the Technical Institute of Fire Protection, the Czech Technical University in Prague, and the Mining and Technical Academy in Ostrava. According to Straka, the authority already has enough evidence that the barrier wall is functioning and preventing the toxic sludge from igniting, making additional expert analysis unnecessary.

Ridera Bohemia has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing, insisting that all work at the heap was carried out strictly according to contract and under the supervision of both the client and state authorities. Meanwhile, separately from the administrative proceedings, the state continues to pursue litigation against the company over the waste removal issue.

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Around Prague, based on reporting by seznamzpravy.cz