Cleansing of Franz Joseph Land from waste in 2017 to cost 700 million rubles
ST. PETERSBURG. Nov 23 (Interfax) - The federal state public sector establishment National Park Russian Arctic has announced an open tender for dealing in 2017 with prior environmental damage to the polluted parts of the islands of the Franz Joseph Land Archipelago, according to materials on state and municipal procurement contracts.
The maximal value of the contract is 701.8 million rubles. The winner of the tender will be required to collect, remove and submit for disposal at least 8,000 tonnes of production and consumption waste from polluted parts of the islands of the archipelago, and also do work on geological exploration of the polluted parts of Franz Joseph Land.
After the work is done, the winner will be required to make a report and make proposals on the planning of the work to remove waste in 2018.
Tender applications will be accepted by December 13. They are scheduled to be considered on December 14, 2016.
According to earlier reports, the archipelago was joined to the Russian Arctic national park in summer 2016. Sergei Shoigu, Russia's defense minister and president of the Russian Geographical Society, then said that the cleansing of the Arctic from the waste accumulated over a period of several decades was one of the main tasks that Russian Geographical Society expeditions are working with the country's ministries and agencies to resolve.
"Our main task now is the Arctic. We are working on the Arctic, the islands. As we know, the cleansing of the island part of Alexandra Island on Franz Joseph Land has recently been completed here. There were 60,000 barrels, over 3,000 tonnes of various fuel and lubricants, several planes, there were a lot of things there. We have completed the [cleansing] work there," Shoigu said.
Franz Joseph Land is a group of 192 islands in the Arctic Ocean, in Northern Europe and some of the polar areas of Russia; it is part of the Primorsky district of the Arkhangelsk region.
