KRASNOYARSK, August 30 (Itar-Tass) —— The management of Nornickel has promised that in the near future the air in Norilsk will be cleaner than in Moscow and even in the Black Sea resort of Sochi.
“Over two years the amount of hazardous exhausts in the air over this city inside the Arctic circle will go down by 80 percent. Norilsk Nickel has allocated 1.5 billion dollars for the purpose,” the director of Nornickel’s Arctic Branch, Yevgeny Muravyov said.
He declared that the company’s management had made a truly revolutionary decision to implement a project for sulfur disposal at two enterprises of the Arctic branch. “This will reduce emissions by a factor of five, and in terms of content of hazardous escapes in the air we shall catch up and even get ahead of such cities as Moscow and Sochi,” Muravyov said.
Norilsk Nickel may become a leader in nature conservation, the chief of the environment watchdog, Vladimir Kirillov, said during a trip to Norilsk. The federal agency and the mining and metal company have an agreement on cooperation in nature management.
“Every quarter the Russian government makes a report on progress in implementing this agreement on environmental monitoring and hazardous escapes. We use the data that we get from the combine. They are quite objective,” Kirillov said.
Over the past few years the company reduced the overall hazardous exhausts by 100,000 tonnes, which is a record for Russian industries. Norilsk is currently working on three large projects expected to improve the ecological situation in Norilsk. Over the past six years the Arctic branch of the company spent 75 billion on solving ecological problems.