By Malya Robenson
In the midst of the pandemic and the protests demanding racial equality which erupted after George Floyd’s death, public attention has been drawn towards these main focal points and has hardly been on much else. Regardless, one area that demands the attention of the public is the current situation in Russia.
On May 29, a power plant leaked several thousand tons of oil into the river around Norilsk, causing the city to declare a state of emergency. Norilsk is a Russian city in the country’s Siberan region, located at the very edge on the Arctic Circle. The Ambarnaya and Daldykan rivers, which is located just to the west of the city, flooded with about 21,000 tons of oil when a fuel tank at the Norilsk Nickel power plant collapsed.
Jarring footage has been released of the Ambarnaya river bleeding a deep shade of red as the oil spreads for kilometers across its surface.
Norilsk Nickel, the company that owns the plant, chalked the collapse up to being caused by climate change and the thawing permafrost which made the ground underneath the tank to become too soft to support its weight, as is the case for a not insignificant number of buildings in towns in the surrounding area. Further investigations however, have called that statement into question. This is likely due to the fact that the Russian government was only notified about the incident two days after it occurred.
It has come to public attention that the container being used to store the oil had not been cleared for use because it did not “fully conform to the demands of industrial safety,” as stated by the country’s investigative committee spokesperson, Svetlana Petrenko. Due to the disregard for environmental protection laws, three people involved in the incident, two engineers and the plant’s director, have since been fired.
Currently, the oil seems to be moving north with the flow of the river, towards Lake Pyasino. Booms have been used to stop the spread of some of the oil while pumps remove it and store it in containers, only having resulted in the cleanup of less than 500 tons of oil. Despite the attempts of Norilsk Nickel to clean up their mess, the harm has already been done.
Due to clean up and water reparation alone, the estimated cost of this monumental mishap is seeming to be around $85 million conservatively.
There are also significant consequences from a purely ecological standpoint as well. Greenpeace has dubbed this the first incident of such a large degree in the Arctic region.
The Russian deputy minister of national resources and the environment, Elena Panova, has estimated that it could take about 10 years for the environment to recover. While the deaths of fish, birds and other wildlife in the area are some of the immediate outcomes of the spill, the toxins in the ecosystem can affect populations for generations to come.
Cleaning the oil out completely with the use of sorbents is a process that can take several years by itself.
It goes without saying that the preliminary timeline of 10 years is just an estimate and that, when it comes to environmental matters, there are a myriad of unknown factors that can alter these types of approximations.
The damaging effects of an oil spill aren’t limited to harming the surrounding wildlife. The spread of oil across a body of water can also have significant impacts on climate change and the warming of the planet which affects everyone.
The thin layer of oil that rests atop the affected water can do a surprising amount when it comes to warming the planet. The oil significantly decreases the amount of heat that is allowed to escape the water by means of evaporation. Instead, the overall temperature of the water warms. When the oil kills plant and animal life, it also lessens the amount of carbon that is able to be captured, halting the flow of the carbon cycle.
All of the harmful effects of both oil spills and the burning of fossil fuels prove that the use of oil instead of renewable energy sources poses a myriad of negative environmental impacts which far outweigh the benefits.
It is difficult for the concerned public to keep track of exactly how much the story has progressed, due to several contributing factors. The impact that the coronavirus and social distancing and quarantine measures have had on the ability of people who work both for government and environmental agencies to do their jobs effectively has been incredibly evident. However, the media’s inability to go forth and get information for the same reasons, paired with their reluctance to cover a story that may not be as interesting to viewers has severely debilitated the public’s ability to know about what is happening in the world which is incredibly dangerous, especially when the information that they are missing pertains to environmental concerns.
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