Ukraine's Environmental Crisis

Government officials are aware of lax safety standards and environmental hazards, but little is done to pursue offending companies

By Kseniya Pasechnik

Late last year, a tire repair factory in the Donetsk area of eastern Ukraine decided to bury smoking rubber waste in the ground not far from its building. The stench lingered in the air, drifting out over nearby villages. Upset inhabitants finally had enough, and, in December, arranged a mass protest near the tire factory's gates. The press came and a scandal broke. In just a few days, the situation in Donetsk was known throughout the country.

Anyone, however, who had hoped that the case would draw attention to the wretched state of the environment in Ukraine and improve the situation has been brought back to earth since then. The factory received a fine, and the controversy quickly quieted down. Despite factories in Donetsk and elsewhere in Ukraine continuing to break laws on waste disposal and management, prosecutors and lawmakers have been slow to react.

"They constantly bring old tires for processing, and putrid smoke hangs above our city all the time," Igor Kolodyazhnyi, a resident Makiivka near the rubber factory, said. "The air smells like cinders and chemicals. Living in such circumstances is simply impossible." Kolodyazhnyi said that although the problem in the Donetsk region is widely known about, no efforts are made to solve it. He believes that the interests of powerful local business groups are enough to discourage any pressure from the authorities. Other regions are also in bad shape, including those still scarred by the Chernobyl nuclear power plant accident more than 20 years ago.

KNOWN OFFENDERS

The air pollution in the Donetsk area is exacerbated by the fires that are common there due to the presence of flammable material. In January, for example, a large fire partly destroyed a local factory that produces nitric acid and ammonium nitrate. Although the Ukrainian Ministry of Extraordinary Situations cited carelessness as the reason that flammable waste products in the factory's storage facilities had been ignited, the authorities downplayed the seriousness of the accident and did not take significant action.

In this industrial belt, accidents such as these are common, both in factories and in the mines. Officials have repeatedly declared their awareness of lax safety standards and environmental hazards and their intentions to take steps to prevent future occurrences. However, both state environmental officials and environmental activists say those words rarely, if ever, take the form of action.

"Accidents happen because chemical companies and those who oversee them … have become accustomed to the release of fumes into the atmosphere and the regular disposal of toxic waste in rivers," Oleg Kruglov, a specialist in environmental protection with the environmental advocacy group Chistaya Zhizn ("Pure Life"), said. Mariupol, a southeastern port city, has the most polluted air of any city in Ukraine, followed closely by Donetsk, he said. "The main question is, what must we do for the air in the region to become clean again?"

State officials in charge of environmental protection readily admit the seriousness of the problem but say their hands are tied. Sergey Tretyakov, head of the State Administration of Ecology and Natural Resources in Donetsk Oblast, said that "reorganization and reconstruction of companies is the only way of solving this problem today."

Nikolai Kostrov, chief of the Ukrainian State Ecological Inspection agency, said time is running out, however, as city and suburban sources of water, as well as the air and soil quality in cities, have reached critical levels. "At this time the area of garbage dumps exceeds the area of preserved territories in Ukraine," he said. "In the capital Kyiv, the most critical situation can be found at the water purification station in Bortnichi [a city suburb]. All sewage waste in Kyiv heads there. Impurities could break through the dike and flow into the Dnieper River if the equipment isn't updated quickly," he said. Anatoliy Golubchenko, deputy head of the Kyiv City administration, recently promised that Bortnichi station would be modernized and a new rubbish recycling plant would be built.