According to media reports, the nickel producer Nornickel disposed of highly toxic liquid waste in rivers and lakes in the Russian tundra after the disaster with 21,000 tons of oil spilled. The government-critical newspaper “Nowaja Gaseta” published videos of the derivations contaminated with heavy metals and acid on Sunday.
These flowed into the Charajelach River, which flows over another river into the unique freshwater lake Pyassino. The prosecutor of the Krasnoyarsk region initiated an investigation into the illegal disposal of toxic liquid waste. The Nornickel company admitted that there were errors. The sewage disposal was stopped, the responsible persons were removed from their posts, it said. “This is a crime against nature and against our children,” said Vasili Ryabkin, a former employee of the local environmental protection agency. He had made the new scandal public together with activists from the environmental protection organization Greenpeace and with the newspaper.
The waters near the Arctic Ocean are currently struggling with the aftermath of the oil spill of late May, when 21,000 tons of oil were spilled. There, in a thermal power station near the city of Norilsk, a huge tank had apparently sagged and broken through the thawing permafrost. Experts spoke of the biggest oil spill in the Russian Arctic.
According to Greenpeace, conservationists and opposition politician Sergei Mitrochin wanted to take soil samples to Moscow this weekend. However, they were stopped at the airport, which also belongs to Nornickel, and prevented from transporting the samples. Everything is being done to hinder the clarification of the disaster, criticized Greenpeace.
“Nowaja Gaseta” also published a photo of a bulldozer flattening a police car in an accident. It was not intentional, it said. The vehicle was there after concerned citizens alerted the police, civil defense, environmental regulators, and prosecutors about the new environmental scandal.
Quelle: What / Dpa
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