YEKATERINBURG, August 8. /TASS/. Cleaning on the Vilkitsky Island in the Kara Sea is due to be completed by 2021, the Yamalo-Nenets Region’s Governor Dmitry Artyukhov posted on Instagram.
The waste has remained in the Yamalo-Nenets Region, including on the islands, after the first wave of Yamal’s intensive development in the 1960-1970s, when environmental standards in extraction of hydrocarbons were less strict. Ecologists say about 1,000 tonnes of scrap metal must be removed from the Vilkitsky Island.
"Clean-up on the island is under way for the third season," the governor wrote. "We plan, it will be completed by 2021, and simultaneously we think how to develop the island’s tourism potential."
Over the past months that volunteers worked on the island, they cleaned 60 hectares, where they collected more than 500 barrels and 200 tonnes of other scrap metal.
"I’ve tried to work like the volunteers are working," the governor continued. "The work is very hard. They work eight hours a day, with only one day off every week."
"The project attracts dozens young people both from Russia and abroad," he added. "This year, we have welcomed volunteers from Israel, Moldova, Kazakhstan."
Clean-up on the Vilkitsky Island to overcome the gained ecology damage there began in July, 2017. During the expeditions in 2017 and 2018, volunteers cleaned 10 hectares of the area around the meteorology station and 20 hectares of the former military base there, as well as the island’s entire coastline. They collected 129 tonnes of scrap metal.
The Vilkitsky Island is uninhabited. It is the Kara Sea’s eastern part between the Ob Bay and the Yenisei Bay. A meteorology station opened there in 1954.