Ecologist - about the Chernobyl Disaster Remembrance Day: emergency situations without hundreds of corpses are not the "accidents" in our country

Lyubov YAKUBOVSKAYA, employee of the Wildlife Conservation Center:

No one will ever worry about some shallow oil leak, it is not customary to sound the alarm about the construction of a house dangerously close to a shallow metro or in the zone of floating soils. It is not customary to worry about the threat to nesting of bird species in the Red Book. Little things. Not a catastrophic release... In order for some kind of environmental action to begin, the responsible authorities need to present mountains of corpses, this is an almost immutable rule. But it is far from the fact that the perpetrators of the disaster will be identified and punished. Rather, on the contrary, they will throw all their strength to chat danger and mislead the public.

I will show you how this is done using the example of a respected national publication. We read the screaming headline - "The man is not guilty!" What are we, readers, so furiously convincing? BUT, here - "the mass death of marine fauna in Avacha Bay was not anthropogenic". Further, with reference to research data from one of the RAS laboratories, there are assurances that everything is calm in Kamchatka...

Let me remind you that in the fall of 2020, the country was shocked by the news of the sudden mass death of marine animals in Avacha Bay, which previously amazed by the abundance of biodiversity. 32 species of a wide variety of fish, seals, sea lions and killer whales - an incomplete list of animals that lived constantly or entered the bay. Suddenly everything was empty, and the bottom of the bay was littered with the corpses of worms, which in ordinary life are not visible, they hide in algae.

What should the reader of such an article, backed up by laboratory data, see? That there were no traces of an accidental release of radioactive or oil waste, rocket fuel or heavy metals. What happened? The text provides an explanation:

“...traces of oil pollution found in the tissues of sea urchins have already been metabolized by animals. This testifies to the long-standing oil poisoning of hedgehogs, which was chronic, not catastrophic. Sea urchins have been absorbing oil for a long time.

Hallelujah! There was no catastrophic release, sleep well, and that hedgehogs are chronically poisoned with oil somewhere is nonsense.

In general, while working with environmental issues and their perception in our society, I have long noticed that it is not customary for us to pay attention to any "alarm bells", in our country only the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant or something comparable to it can be considered an incident. ... No one will ever worry about some small leak, it is not customary to worry about building a house in dangerous proximity to a shallow metro or in a zone of floating soils. It is not customary to worry about the threat to nesting of bird species in the Red Book. Little things. Not a catastrophic blowout.

I am now talking not only about the decisions of officials. Society, including its leading members, also looks at what is happening in this way: if it explodes, then we begin to worry. Why then do people get angry with the police, who, according to their work, answer: if he kills, then call. There will be corpses, there will be business...

The message that traces of chronic oil poisoning were found in sea urchins in Avacha Bay was published in February, now April. I did not find any information in the search engine that the local authorities decided to identify the source of the oil leak and eliminate it. Everyone is happy that scientists have recognized that the massive pestilence in the fall of 2020 was not man-made. Celebrating! Relax until the next accident.

Or here's another kind of story from another part of our vast homeland. In Yakutia, they are going to build an enterprise for the production of coke for the needs of ferrous metallurgy. The Chinese company is investing multimillion-dollar investments not only in the construction of the plant, but also in the development of the education system in the region to provide production with qualified personnel. What is not a reason to sing praises to the head of the republic, the development of infrastructure and the creation of new jobs is coming, if not for some small details.

It is stated that the coke will be produced for the metallurgical plants of the investor corporation located in the Chinese province of Hebei. This region of China is a leader in steelmaking, but the Chinese authorities have taken a course towards greening production and are encouraging manufacturers to switch from coke to electric furnaces. Don't you hear the alarm bell too?

Northern nature is very vulnerable, due to the harsh climate, it takes longer to recover in case of accidents. Where the Chinese province of Hebei with its climatic conditions in the event of an accident would take years or decades to compensate for the natural consequences, the north of Russia will need hundreds or thousands of years. Yakutia is going to build a production facility with harmful emissions, including those containing, for example, mercury, and not only it. A story similar to placer gold mining is repeating itself. In China, it was banned due to its extreme harm to the environment, and Chinese gold miners moved their dredges to the Far East, began to poison the nature there. But there is no mass pestilence - neither society nor the caring rulers of this society have anxiety.

In Moscow, the South-East Expressway is being built dangerously close to the disposal of radioactive waste, ecologists record the excess of radioactive background at the problem area, build maps on which they demonstrate that in the event of emergency damage to the disposal site, more than a million Muscovites will be in the affected area. But now there is no accident, there is no mountain of corpses, there are not even thousands of people affected by radiation sickness. No cause for concern?

The geography of emergencies covers the entire country, and the authorities' disregard for environmental information is evident everywhere. In order for some action to begin on the problem, the responsible authorities need to present the corpses, this is an almost immutable rule.

In Khakassia, attention was drawn to the leakage of cyanides from the Kommunarovskoye mine only after the mass death of grayling in the Bely Iyus river in the Shirinsky region. RIA Novosti, citing data from Rosprirodnadzor, reported that due to a dam leak at the Kommunarovsky mine, cyanides entered the river, background concentrations for nitrite ions were exceeded 13 times, for cyanides - 4.8 times. A massive fish kill was recorded on April 8, although local residents have signaled an emergency since the end of March. We are talking about the doubtfulness of the dam's serviceability. Even without an engineering degree it should be clear that if this structure leaks, then it can completely collapse. Ecologists have already calculated that, should such an accident happen, cyanides will "swim" right up to the Ob, irrevocably poisoning all the fish throughout their "voyage".

What can we today, April 26, on the anniversary of the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, record as an asset of the actions of the authorities of Khakassia in connection with the situation around the dam of a gold mining enterprise? The authorities have created a "working group". Through the media, it is reported that the company has carried out some work to strengthen the dam. There are no public oversight mechanisms. By the way, does everyone understand the meaning of this official phrase about public control? In essence, this means that we must take our word for it to the enterprise that it has taken care of our safety. An enterprise whose ecological image has been hopelessly damaged by endless challenges to court decisions in connection with previous environmental violations.

It was not by chance that I turned to you on the anniversary of the Chernobyl accident. Before the 1986 disaster in the USSR, it was believed that environmental protection was at the highest level. The accident in Chernobyl, its numerous victims then shook the whole country, because the environmentalists of each region pointed to their local little "Chernobyl", then society's eyes suddenly opened. In 35 years, Russia seems to be waiting for a large-scale environmental disaster again, in order to have a reason to think about how correctly it approaches the issues of environmental preservation.