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A commercial leisure complex — complete with a restaurant, café, artificial pond and children’s playgrounds — was constructed on protected state forestry land in Surkhandarya region before the developer obtained the environmental clearance required by law, according to official documentation reviewed by Anhor.uz.
The Surkhandarya branch of the State Ecological Expertise Centre issued a positive conclusion on the facility on 21 October 2026, describing it as an “ecotourism point” in Uzun district. The conclusion itself makes clear that the complex was already standing at the time of assessment. Built across 2,473 square metres of the 1.025-hectare plot, the site includes shops, an ice-cream café, a restaurant, a canteen, children’s play areas and storage facilities.
The land belongs to the Karatag forestry unit of the Babatag State Forestry Enterprise. A resident of Denau district, Muhammadjon Narzullayev, holds it under lease agreement No. 07, signed on 5 January 2026.
A Pond Fed by River Water, Nineteen Metres Away
The centrepiece of the complex is a 1,500-square-metre artificial pond, around which gazebo installations were still under way at the time of the inspection. The operator plans to offer pedal-boat rides on the pond. Water will be pumped directly from a nearby river — 2,000 cubic metres per year — with the riverbank sitting just 19 metres from the site boundary. The complex is intended to operate around the clock.
Under Article 13 of Uzbekistan’s law on ecological expertise, a draft environmental-impact statement must be submitted before a project receives financing, let alone before construction begins. Article 96 of the Code of Administrative Responsibility sets out administrative liability for implementing a project without a prior positive state ecological conclusion. The sequence documented here — build first, obtain approval after — inverts that legal order.
A Second Approval on the Same Forestry Land
Two days earlier, on 19 October, the same Surkhandarya branch approved a separate project on land also leased from the Karatag forestry unit of Babatag leshoz: a stone-crushing plant operated by LLC Jasur Bulding, covering 0.8 hectares under lease reference No. 01-02/10-5712. According to the plant’s technical passport, operations will generate 760 tonnes of hazardous waste annually.
The back-to-back approvals — a round-the-clock tourist resort and an industrial stone-crusher, both on land belonging to the same protected state forestry enterprise — raise questions about how commercial leases of forestry territory are being granted and overseen, and whether the ecological review process is functioning as a genuine pre-construction safeguard or as a formality applied after the fact.