President Vladimir Putin said on Friday the scale of the clear-up operation after a huge fuel spill in the Arctic was unprecedented for Russia, with Greenpeace estimating the environmental damage to waters in the region at $1.4 billion.
A vast fuel tank lost pressure on May 29 and unleashed 21,000 tonnes of diesel into rivers and subsoil near the city of Norilsk, an incident that Greenpeace has compared to the devastating 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill off Alaska.
“Russia has not yet had an experience of clearing up such vast pollution from bodies of water as far as I understand,” Putin told officials on state television.
It will take at least 10 years for biodiversity in the waters to fully return where the accident happened, the state fishing agency said at the meeting.
Vladimir Chuprov, a Greenpeace activist, said the damage to the water totalled 100 billion roubles ($1.44 billion), a figure that was higher than it should be because of what he said was the slow official response, the TASS news agency reported.
The city of Norilsk is home to mining giant Norilsk Nickel. The company and emergency specialists are collecting contaminated soil and fuel from local rivers into containers.
Nornickel has already spent 5 billion roubles on the clean-up, its co-owner Vladimir Potanin said. The mining giant also plans to spend 13.5 billion roubles on safety checks for its remaining fuel storage tanks in 2020-2021.
Putin previously ordered officials to check all similar fuel storages in Russia, and they plan to complete this process by July 24, they told him.
Also Read:
“The Lord of the Rings” actor Ian Holm dies aged 88
Technology hailed in Bahrain’s efforts to mitigate COVID-19 spread
Elderly couple successfully recovers from COVID-19: MOH
