Active phase of Norilsk oil spill cleanup completed - Russian Emergency Situations Ministry
MOSCOW. June 16 (Interfax) - Rescuers have finished the active phase of removing the mixture of fuel and water in Norilsk; the purification of small reservoirs is continuing, Russia's Emergency Situations Ministry said.
"The active phase of removing the fuel and water mixture from the river's surface has been completed. Efforts continue to clean the surface of small reservoirs and treat the shoreline with sorbent and remove a film of petroleum products from the surface," the ministry said.
Emergency Situations Minister Yevgeny Zinichev called for specific proposals on environmental remediation, the ministry said.
"I want to emphasize control over ensuring proper conditions for storing the collected fuel-water mixture and polluted ground. Environmental monitoring must continue so that further measures can be taken forthwith if need be. And also, it is time to think about environmental remediation, to work through this issue," Zinichev was quoted by the ministry as saying.
Since June 4, over 84,000 of polluted ground and 31,000 cubic meters of fuel-water mixture have been removed from the site and 52 kilometers of shoreline and over 63,000 square meters of contaminated area have been treated with sorbent, the ministry said.
"To prevent petroleum products getting into Lake Pyasino, up to 64 lines of boom barriers have been installed, including 21 lines of adsorbent booms," the press service said.
Additionally, specialists led by the Federal Service for Supervision of Natural Resources (Rosprirodnadzor) carry out daily contamination checks on the Ambarnaya and Pyasina rivers and Lake Pyasino, the shoreline ground along the entire length of the spill and sediments, the ministry said.
For his part, deputy director of the Federal Agency for Fishery (Rosrybolovstvo), Vasily Sokolov, told the government's permanent working commission in charge of the response operation that a commission had been formed to assess the damage to the water bioresources and their habitat and to prepare a plan of post-cleanup measures.
"Samples are being taken and results analyzed, and the ichthyological situation is being evaluated. Over the next two or three days, hydrobiological samples will be taken on the lakes and rivers of the region," Sokolov said.
The commission's meeting concluded with Zinichev calling on all agencies involved to continue the cleanup at the oil spill site.
"We must ensure maximum neutralization of negative effects for the environment," he said.
On May 29, a fuel tank at Power Plant No. 3 of the Norilsk-Taymyr Energy Company (NTEC), which is part of Norilsk Nickel and provides electricity for the Norilsk industrial district, lost pressure and began leaking oil products, which caused a fire. The tank contained more than 21,000 tonnes of diesel fuel, which leaked into the Daldykan and Ambarnaya Rivers, which flow into Lake Pyasino.
The Norilsk fuel spill was declared a federal emergency on June 3.
The accident at Norilsk's Power Plant No. 3 became the second largest such emergency in Russia following the spill of 94,000 tonnes of oil in Komi in 1994. The cleanup effort at the time took six years.
