Over 80,000 t of wastes removed from Arctic and disposed in 7 years - Putin
ST. PETERSBURG. April 9 (Interfax) - President Vladimir Putin announced the results of "a big clean-up" of Arctic areas and put forward new tasks of clearing them of industrial wastes.
"We have been conducting a so-called big clean-up of Arctic territories for several years now. Over 80,000 tonnes of wastes have been removed and disposed of since 2012," he said at a plenary session of the International Arctic Forum in St. Petersburg on Tuesday.
"Six major sites of accumulated environmental damage will be eliminated in the framework of the Clean Country federal project in the next few years in Arkhangelsk and Murmansk regions, the Nenets autonomous district, Karelia and Yakutia," he said.
The president said that the Kola Bay water surface will have to be cleaned over an area exceeding 200 square kilometers.
"We will also be developing the system of specially protected wildlife reserves, primarily the Russian Arctic national park. It is important to work out additional measures to develop civilized ecological tourism there," Putin said.
All this should become a response to the ecological challenges that Russia is facing in the Arctic zone, he said.
"One of the challenges is to guarantee a balance between economic development and saving the Arctic wildlife, preserving its unique fragile biological systems. And, of course, to mitigate the damage accumulated in the course of sometimes extensive consumerist economic operations of previous decades," the president said.