YAKUTSK, December 24. /TASS/. More than four million tonnes of industrial and construction waste still remain on the Arctic Ocean’s coastline in Yakutia. The situation must be addressed immediately, Director of the North’s Applied Ecology Institute (the North-Eastern Federal University, NEFU) Grigory Savvinov told TASS.
According to experts, Yakutia’s five Arctic districts suffer major ecological damage. Those districts make the so-called Yana-Indigirka impact zone, that contains dumps of hard waste from gold and tin production. The dumps have been left as they are, without any revegetation. The accumulated damage is so huge, that the Arctic nature would not be able to process it even for centuries.
"It is a problem of accumulated ecological degradation, which must be referred to as a major ecological problem in the Arctic region," the scientist said. "For example, the contamination in the Ust-Yana district is in the areas where used to work the Kularzoloto and Sakhaolovo gold and tin mining plants, which were the main sources of contamination. When they were closed, there remained about 60 locations of non-revegetated contaminated lands, including the tailing dumps of the former Kular gold extracting plant and the Deputatskaya central processing factory, as well as eight abandoned industrial towns."
The most depressing situations are in the Ust-Yana and Verkhoyansky districts, where the Soviet times’ tailing dumps remain hazardous sources of the environment’s contamination.
Contamination sources
In the Verkhoyansky district the potential contamination sources, which threaten the population’s health, are around former industrial facilities in the Batagai and Ege-Khaya villages. The most threatening is the abandoned tailing dump of the former Plant 418, which is very close to the Yana River’s flow and which is practically within the Batagai village.
Additionally, practically all diamond mines in Yakutia are in areas of rivers, which either flow directly into the Laptev Sea by the Anabar or Olenyok Rivers, or by the Lena River’s transit system, which is connected with the Arctic Ocean coastal waters. "This situation highlights a few geo-ecological problems, which require scientific approaches," the expert said.
The development of placer diamond deposits has affected the Anabar River’s ecosystem, scientists say. "We have registered the transformation of, first of all, alluvial (floodplain - TASS) landscapes," he continued. "We can see the formation of a new man-caused landscape. Presently, it takes about 10% of the Anabar’s middle course."
The continuous inflow of suspended solids is the reason of their accumulation in the riverbed, he explained. This situation changes the rivers hydro-chemical regime, as well as the fish structure and productivity.
Ecological risks
Scientists have seen that in the Anabar River’s areas close to diamond production fish contain bigger concentrations of heavy metals, which are drained into the river during the washing process. "We have seen a close correlation between the water disposable metal forms in the water and high heavy metals concentrations in fish’s kidney, liver and scales," the expert said.
Additionally, results of the institute’s studies have shown that zooplankton’s biomass in the river has shrunk by almost 19 times. The river’s spawning areas have also shrunk. Therefore, the populations of ryapushka, broad whitefish and whitefish have been endangered. At the same time, lamprey, grayling and pike are not to be found any more in that water flow.
The coming large-scale development of oil and gas fields on the Arctic shelf will inevitably lead to pollution of the water area, to violation of fish food and spawning conditions, the scientist continued. "However, as of now, in such projects, the studies of the damage to fish resources have been insufficient. We are specifically concerned about the species, which are fished traditionally in Yakut districts - normally, fish come to those coastal areas to gain weight and form spawning shoals," he added.
The scientist stressed the importance of a new stage of complex studies to see the Arctic ecosystem’s conditions in the growing development of mining projects. "This is necessary for making a sustainable development strategy," he explained. "In this matter our hopes are with the program for complex scientific studies under the world-class "North: Territory of Sustainable Development scientific-educational center," he said.
The scientific center
The world-class scientific and educational center "North: Territory of Sustainable Development" has united institutes of Yakutia’s Academy of Sciences and the Yakut scientific center of the Russian Academy of Science, and the NEFU. The center’s objective is to implement latest technologies and studies in the spheres of biotechnologies and permafrost research. The center works in five regions - Yakutia, Sakhalin, Magadan, Kamchatka and Chukotka.