Six-month drainage project in Buzovna nears completion, but its cost and contractors remain unknown

Work to drain groundwater in the centre of Baku’s Buzovna settlement has entered its final stage about six months after it began, but state institutions have yet to disclose the project’s cost, source of financing, client, contractor or documents authorising the discharge of water into the Caspian Sea.

The project involves laying a gravity-fed plastic pipe measuring about 300 mm in diameter and approximately 300 metres in length at a depth of up to 1.3 metres. Observations at the site indicate that the system includes four inspection chambers and five connections. It is intended to drain groundwater and rainwater that had been rising to the surface in central Buzovna.

The flow of water that had flooded the road and the adjacent area has now been stopped. Construction workers are carrying out the final operations, after which the road surface is expected to be restored.

However, resolving the local problem has taken approximately six months. For a project of this scale, a technically justified period — including excavation, pipe laying, construction of chambers, connection of branches, hydraulic testing, backfilling and asphalting — could ordinarily be about 20 to 30 working days.

Road excavated for a second time

The distinctive feature of the project is not limited to the length of the work. After the pipe was laid, the trench was initially filled in hastily without the road being fully restored.

The situation changed after Mehman Aliyev, director of the Turan Analytical Service, sent another information request on August 4 to the Ministry of Ecology and Natural Resources, the State Water Resources Agency, the State Committee for Urban Planning and Architecture and the Khazar District Executive Authority.

The information request asked for the following details:

• the project’s official name and approved purpose;
• the state client and contracting organisation;
• the source of financing and cost of the work;
• the designer and technical supervision organisation;
• the legal basis for closing the road;
• the original and revised completion dates;
• the reasons for reopening the trench;
• the cost of restoring the road surface;
• the organisation that will take the system onto its balance sheet.

The Ombudsman’s Office was also notified of the request. No response was received, but the section that had already been filled in was excavated again. More substantial work was subsequently carried out at the site, including reinforcement of the base, construction of chambers, inspection of the connections and the relaying of individual elements of the system.

Turan does not have documents that would make it possible to determine whether the second excavation was envisaged by the original project or was undertaken to correct earlier deficiencies. Visual observations, however, show that the scope and quality of the subsequent work differed markedly from the initial hasty backfilling.

The episode raises a central question for the investigation: why were the necessary operations not completed before the trench was first closed, and did the repeated work require additional budget expenditure?

Six months of transport disruption

The closed road is one of the main routes to Buzovna’s private and public beaches. For approximately six months, buses and other vehicles have been forced to make a lengthy detour.

This has increased journey times and caused inconvenience for residents and public transport passengers. During the summer season, the consequences went beyond a municipal problem: some beachgoers switched to other beaches, which local business owners said reduced customer traffic to retail and service businesses in Buzovna.

There has been no documented assessment of the losses suffered by businesses. However, the lack of unrestricted access to the beach area at the height of the season points to probable losses for the local economy and tourism sector.

Neither the client nor the Khazar District Executive Authority has said whether the socio-economic consequences of the road closure were assessed or whether the organisation of temporary access was considered.

A project without a public information passport

Throughout the construction period, there was no information board at the site stating the project’s name and purpose, the client, designer, contractor, construction timetable and responsible officials.

The requirement to display such a board is set out in clause 6.1.9 of the AzDTN 1.6-2 construction standard, “Organisation of Construction”. Previous Turan reports also raised the question of compliance with the principles of openness established by Article 7.0.6 and Articles 25–27 of the Urban Planning and Construction Code.

As a result, the details of the project remain unknown to the public even at its final stage.

The absence of this information makes it impossible to establish who is responsible for the six-month delay and who should monitor the quality of the system after it is commissioned.

Environmental approval not confirmed

Of all the institutions contacted, the principal substantive response came from the Ministry of Ecology and Natural Resources.

In a letter dated July 2, the ministry said no steps had been taken to obtain a state environmental expert opinion for the project. Regional Ecology Department No. 11 requested information from the operator about the client, contractor, person responsible for environmental matters and project documents to conduct administrative proceedings.

According to information available to Turan, the United Water Supply Service for Large Cities did not provide these documents to the environmental authority. The State Environmental Expertise Agency also said in its August 17 response to the August 4 information request that it had received neither an application nor project documentation for consideration.

One water sample, according to correspondence between the agencies, detected no pollutants. That analysis alone, however, does not answer questions concerning the project’s legal basis, its impact on the coastal zone, the water discharge regime or the need for an environmental opinion.

The absence of an application for an environmental assessment does not automatically prove that the construction is unlawful. The category of the facility and the list of approvals required for it must first be established. Yet these are precisely the documents that state institutions have not disclosed. It is therefore impossible to verify whether the requirements of environmental and urban-planning legislation were observed.

Ombudsman forwarded replies but did not secure disclosure

After full responses to the May 25 requests were not provided, Aliyev appealed on June 23 to Human Rights Commissioner Sabina Aliyeva. Citing the Constitution and the Law on Access to Information, he asked for those responsible for the project to be identified and for the disclosure of its documents to be secured.

The Ombudsman’s Office requested information from state agencies and forwarded the letters it received to the applicant. The main questions — concerning the cost, contractor, permits, financing and timetable — remained unanswered.

The Ombudsman’s intervention has therefore not yet secured the exercise of the right of access to information. The correspondence showed only that the agencies either referred the request to one another or said that technical and legal oversight did not fall within their competence.

In letters dated June 4 and August 11, the Khazar District Executive Authority said specialised inspections, technical examinations and legal assessments fell outside its powers. The request was forwarded to the United Water Supply Service for Large Cities, but Turan received no comprehensive response from that body. This formal response is incorrect.

The Regulations on Local Executive Authorities, approved by Presidential Decree No. 648 of June 6, 2012, assign district administrations specific responsibilities in urban planning, infrastructure, municipal improvement and environmental protection.

Under clause 3.11.1 of the Regulations, a local executive authority ensures the implementation of state policy on architecture and urban planning within the relevant territory.

Clause 3.11.2 provides for oversight of urban-planning activity in accordance with approved planning documentation, standards and regulations.

If a failure to comply with construction standards is detected, the local executive authority must, under clause 3.11.5, apply to a court or the Ministry of Emergency Situations to have the construction suspended.

Buzovna waits while Mardakan gets new asphalt

The protracted work in Buzovna is particularly striking against the background of road repairs in neighbouring Mardakan.

While Buzovna’s main road remained closed and unpaved for months, about one kilometre of apparently serviceable road surface was removed and replaced with new asphalt on the central Sergei Yesenin Street in Mardakan.

There was also no accessible information board at the Mardakan work site explaining the reason for the repairs or identifying the client, contractor, cost and source of financing.

Turan does not possess the results of a technical inspection of Yesenin Street and therefore cannot claim that replacement of the road surface was unjustified. The different approaches nevertheless require an explanation: why was the restoration of a strategically important road in Buzovna delayed for six months while resources were directed towards replacing existing asphalt in central Mardakan?

The Khazar District Executive Authority should disclose which assessments were used to determine the sequence of these projects, how they were financed and which organisations were responsible for carrying them out.

Signs of coordinated silence

Previous Turan reports described the failure of several institutions to respond as possible coordinated avoidance of information disclosure. The behaviour of the agencies does create an impression of institutional mutual protection: each participant holds only a fragment of the information, while none identifies the body bearing overall responsibility for the project.

A legal conclusion that there was a cartel arrangement or corruption would, however, require evidence of coordinated action, a financial interest or abuse of official powers. Turan does not currently possess such evidence.

At the same time, legislation treats transparency in the work of state institutions as an element of the fight against corruption. The Law on Combating Corruption is aimed, among other things, at ensuring the legality, openness and effectiveness of state institutions. An unjustified refusal to provide publicly available information may result in liability, but only a competent authority may classify a particular act as a corruption offence after conducting an investigation.

Pipe almost ready, questions remain

The work in Buzovna is nearing completion and should eliminate the visible part of the problem — groundwater rising to the surface, damage to the road and disruption of traffic.

The administrative side of the project, however, remains as opaque as it was six months ago. It is not known how much the original and repeated work cost, why the project was not completed within a technically justified period, who was responsible for technical supervision or why a project involving the discharge of water into the Caspian was not submitted to the environmental authority.

The Buzovna case shows that public oversight can influence the quality of construction work: after the information requests were submitted, the trench that had already been filled was excavated again and the structure began to be brought to a more substantial standard. At the same time, the case demonstrated the limits of such oversight — even an appeal to the Ombudsman did not compel state institutions to disclose basic information about a public infrastructure project.

Completion of construction cannot therefore be regarded as the end of the investigation. The investigation can be considered complete only after the project plans, cost estimates, contracts, environmental documents and technical supervision reports have been published and the reasons for the six-month delay have been explained.

Initial backfilling of the road section after the drainage line was laid on Ruhulla Akhundov Street in central Buzovna.

The reopened section of Ruhulla Akhundov Street in Buzovna after additional work and the laying of a new road base.

Removal of the asphalt surface on Sergei Yesenin Street in the Mardakan settlement.

New asphalt surface laid on Sergei Yesenin Street in Mardakan.

Photo: Mehman Aliyev / Turan

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