MOSCOW, November 21. / TASS /. The management of the Murmansk Sea Trade Port has invested about 1.8 billion rubles ($27.4 mln) into the environmental safety of coal transshipment over the past two years, due to which the amount of harmful emissions has decreased fourfold, the Chairman of Board of Directors of the port Denis Ilatovsky said on Wednesday at the "Days of the Arctic in Moscow".
Earlier it was reported that Murmansk Commercial Seaport has undertaken a number of steps to reduce emissions of coal dust, which is a significant environmental problem in Murmansk. In particular, by 2020 it is planned to complete the construction of dust-proof screens around the port."Over the past two years, all ports [belonging to SUEK] that transship coal have spent about 4.2 bln rubles on environmental protection, of which the Murmansk port used about 1.8 bln rubles for 2017-2018. With this amount of money, we have reduced harmful emissions by 4 times. In principle, the use of the best available technologies, we will be able to reduce emissions by 10 times, and what we have achieved is the half way point, we have not done everything," he said.Ilatovsky explained that "snow cannons" were installed along the entire perimeter of the seaport, snow and water mist generators that prevent dust from spreading in the air. Now a dust wall is being built in the port 2 km in length and 20 meters in height. In addition, an industrial area is being planted, technological driveways are irrigated, and all passing cars are cleaned in order not to carry the dirt on.
"We are arranging an environmental control room, which allows us to predict the climate for several days ahead: to predict the force of the wind, to predict our technological processes and to accelerate or slow them down depending on the weather," he added.