Diesel Leak : Authorities in the siberian city of norilsk on june 2 declared a state of emergency after a diesel fuel leak seeped into a local river.
The world wildlife fund (wwf) released satellite photos showing crimson red waters in the daldykan and ambarnaya rivers.the environmental Disaster group warned that the poisoned water could reach lake pyasino, north of the city, but said on june 2 that oil booms installed by the federal marine rescue service appeared to be helping.
However, the containment doesn’t mean that toxic elements won’t enter the lake, said aleksey knizhnikov of wwf-russia.
“unfortunately the most poisonous elements of diesel fuel are aromatic compounds like benzol, toluene, ethyl benzene, xylene, which mix with the water and it is impossible to collect them using oil booms,” he said.
‘Ecological catastrophe’
Russia’s rosrybolovstvo state fishing agency described the fuel leak as an ecological catastrophe.
“it can already be said now that it will take decades for the restoration of the ecological balance of the affected norilo-pyasinsky water system,” said dmitry klokov, a spokesman for the agency.
Russian mining conglomerate norilsk nickel, which owns the thermal power facility, said the leak was caused when pillars supporting a storage tank sank due to permafrost soil thawing.
Norilsk, an isolated city of 180,000 people built around norilsk nickel, the world’s leading nickel and palladium producer, is constructed on permafrost and its infrastructure is threatened by melting ice caused by climate change
This news was originally posted on rferl.org