Russian authorities said the fuel spill at an Arctic power station earlier in 2020 was the largest in world history, a top emergencies official said Thursday.
Some 21,000 tons of oil poured into the surrounding ground and waterways near the city of Norilsk after a diesel oil tank belonging to a subsidiary of Russian metals giant Nornickel collapsed on May 29.
“Such an amount of liquid diesel fuel has never been spilled in the history of mankind,” the state-run RIA Novosti news agency quoted Deputy Emergency Minister Alexander Chupriyan as telling reporters.
“We already trapped the fuel in the Arctic zone,” he said.
A team of Nornickel-funded scientists, meanwhile, struck a more optimistic tone with their discovery of the five polluted rivers’ self-cleaning abilities, according to their final report cited by the state-run TASS news agency Wednesday.
“The microflora in the studied waters has adapted to oil products and is able to participate in their decomposition,” said members of the so-called Great Norilsk Expedition organized by the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences in August.
Nornickel is currently contesting a $2 billion damages claim with Russia’s state environmental watchdog.
A different Nornickel-commissioned report said last month that the oil spill was “inevitable” due to design flaws, management failures and rising temperatures in the region.
Mass Fish Die-Off in Southern Russia Sparks Probe
Thousands of dead fish washed up on the shores of a reservoir in southern Russia’s republic of Kalmykia this weekend, prompting fears of an environmental disaster.
Witnesses filmed the fish carcasses lining the Arshan-Zelmen reservoir, describing an “absolutely terrible” smell and pointing to emissions from factories in nearby regions as a possible cause.
Investigators have launched an inquiry into the media reports of the mass fish deaths, the state-run TASS news agency reported Sunday.
Regional prosecutors said they believe the mass die-off was the result of a critical drop in water level and oxygen deficiency.
Both the Investigative Committee and the regional prosecutors’ office said they will determine their next course of action based on their initial probes.
Built in the mid-1930s, the Arshan-Zelmen reservoir has until recent years been used for irrigation.
This is at least the second known mass die-off of aquatic creatures in Russia in the past month. In early October, an unexplained phenomenon wiped out 95% of marine life, including octopuses, seals, sea urchins and crabs, off Russia’s Pacific coast in the Kamchatka region.
It also comes amid a string of environmental disasters across Russia in 2020, including a massive diesel fuel spill in the Arctic and large-scale wildfires in Siberia.
Environmental issues have become a thorny topic for the Russian authorities in recent years, with a number of protests breaking out over unwanted landfills and plans to mine for limestone at a sacred site.
