Fifteen years ago, the world's largest mercury spill occurred at the Kazakhstani Khimprom. Then the emergency was averted - the poisonous lake was stopped on the way to the Irtysh. However, years later, nature conservationists are sounding the alarm again. What danger threatens Siberia this time, and can mercury gin break out of the clay sarcophagus?
From Omsk to Pavlodar it is eight hours by bus. After customs procedures have been simplified, tickets at the station kiosk are snapped up like hot cakes. There are practically no vacancies. The two border towns are closely linked by family ties. Even the governor of the Omsk region, Leonid Polezhaev, began his career in Pavlodar. Local graduates are still going to Siberia for Russian diplomas. And two more cities are connected by one river. However, Irtysh does not know customs, borders and other attributes of sovereignty. Therefore, if trouble happens with the once great waterway, the Omsk region will automatically remain hostage.
“There is a sufficient number of fresh deposits near Pavlodar,” says Serik Beisenkulov, deputy head of the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Management of Pavlodar Region. - If something happens, they will be enough to provide the entire local population with drinking water.
In the Omsk Irtysh region, there are no alternative sources of water supply at all. Poisonous substances will get into the river - the region will have to be closed for at least 25 years, and the population will be evacuated. Perhaps that is why the word “mercury” alone causes a flurry of negative emotions among Omsk officials and a lack of desire to continue the conversation. Fifteen years ago, the city with a population of one million already lived like a powder keg.
Together with specialists from the Pavlodar natural resources department, we drive through the northern industrial zone of the city. It was here that the world-famous Khimprom enterprise was located. Today the former capacities of the industrial giant were bought by the private joint-stock company "Caustic". The sarcophagus with buried mercury is now located on its territory. The new factory is surrounded by a huge concrete fence with armed guards on the towers.
Several years ago, the deputy president of "Caustic" Artur Akhmetov came to Omsk to "calm down the population." He declared that he was personally ready to donate blood and thereby confirm that there was no danger. He invited everyone to a tour of the plant to demonstrate that mercury is safely locked up. However, when the correspondent of "RG" nevertheless arrived at the plant, not a trace of Akhmetov's former hospitality remained. He categorically refused to show the ill-fated sarcophagus at least from a distance.
- You have nothing to do there, period, - snapped Artur Darazhatovich and escorted me out the door.
Even the guarantee of the Pavlodar oblast akimat staff did not help.
Promotional video:
- What to do is his personal right. We cannot force him, - the chief inspector of the regional akim Serzhan Kaliyakparov threw up his hands. - It's private property.
As it turned out, Akhmetov does not allow not only curious journalists, but also local nature conservationists to visit the sarcophagus. According to employees of the Department of Natural Resources, before gaining access to the territory, they have a two-week correspondence with the enterprise. Fight against corruption. Omsk officials also failed to recall when they last personally saw the mercury burial ground. What secrets does Artur Akhmetov keep from prying eyes and why was a private enterprise allowed to keep a "bomb"?
No one knows for certain what is currently happening with a potentially dangerous object. Experts judge the state of the "clay jug" filled to the brim with mercury only by samples from wells drilled along the perimeter.
“We select them for our Russian colleagues twice a year,” says Kazakh hydrogeologist Eduard Lushin.
His work experience exceeded 50 years. However, even an experienced Lushin does not undertake to judge how mercury will behave in a burial ground over time. Nobody knows how durable and safe walls made of bentonite clay are. The "funeral" of 900 tons of hazardous metal in a clay crypt is the first in the world.
“We first discovered mercury here in groundwater back in 1976,” recalls Lushin. - But attempts to take samples at the enterprise were unsuccessful - I was caught by the special services twice. And all the alarming messages about pollution settled in the local regional committee under the heading "secret".
“We learned about the mercury leak at the Pavlodar chemical plant quite by accident, only in 1996 from a slip of the press in the press,” recalls Vyacheslav Pekov, former deputy head of the Russian Emergencies Ministry in the Omsk region. - The river neighbors preferred to silence the problem, although it was the largest leak in the world.
“When we went to the dilapidated plant, puddles of mercury stood right on the floor,” says Professor Anatoly Soloviev. - It was a real nightmare.
The Soviet Union built Pavlodar "Khimprom" as a dual-purpose plant. The enterprise produced chlorine and caustic soda in a “dirty” but cheap mercury method for the needs of the population, and at the same time was going to produce the most powerful chemical weapons. Laboratories were erected on the territory of the plant to test the latest developments of the Soviet army. Therefore, Khimprom was guarded as a secret strategic facility.
As it turned out later, for several decades the conspiratorial plant dumped mercury-containing waste practically "for itself". Due to imperfections in the technological process, almost one and a half kilograms of hazardous metal were lost in the production of each ton of products. As a result, workshop No. 31 literally drowned in a poisonous chemical lake, and more than 900 tons (!) Of mercury went underground. Part of the "loss" penetrated to the level of the aquifer, formed a mercuric chloride solution there and moved towards the Irtysh.
How the Siberians managed to save the river is another story. The authorities of the two countries reassured Omsk residents that it would take another fifty years before the mercury reaches the coast, and were in no hurry to allocate money. In other words, they were discouraged from being baptized until the thunder struck. But scientists have created their own field laboratory. We took samples of soil, water, fish, plankton for analysis. The results were shocking. In some places, the permissible concentration limit exceeded the norm by tens of thousands of times. And in 2000, poisonous compounds were found already a hundred meters from the waterway. The officers of the Ministry of Emergency Situations have perfectly mastered the skills of drawing up petitions to all instances. In Kazakhstan, landings of "greens" from other countries began to land, worried that mercury would go further - to the Ob and the Arctic Ocean. However, foreign demercurization projects were again too expensive.
The problem was partially solved only in 2004. The project of the Ukrainian enterprise "Eurochem" was taken as a basis, which at one time built the ill-fated plant. The mercury workshop was dismantled and buried in a special sarcophagus, and rolled into concrete on top. And on the way of poisonous underground waters they built the so-called. wall in bentonite clay soil. Subsequently, hazardous compounds were going to be removed from the ground and processed in a vacuum unit. But seven years have passed, and things are still there.
“Over the past five years, the movement of mercury has not been recorded,” says Sergei Polev, head of the water resources department for the Omsk region of the Nizhneobsk Basin Water Administration. - The Russian and Kazakhstani sides regularly monitor and exchange research results. Samples from 150 wells drilled on the way to the Irtysh show that there is no reason for panic.
“We constantly find mercury only in well No. 7,” says Yuri Popov, director of the Pavlodar branch of Azimut Energy Services. - However, its volley emissions were obtained from wells 22 and 27. However, why they happened is unknown.
If for another five years mercury does not appear in the remaining wells, the monitoring, for which the Russian side annually allocates 450 thousand rubles, and the Kazakh side - 80 million tenge, will be stopped altogether. Both sides have already happily forgotten about the second part of demercurization. Pavlodar environmentalists considered the processing of contaminated soil economically inexpedient. For ten years, two regions have not been able to find funds to completely eliminate the consequences of the disaster. According to the Kazakh side, private companies have shown interest in the burial ground several times. A kilogram of mercury on the world market costs at least $ 15. If you pump out even a few tons of clay, you can become a millionaire. However, the technological process itself is too complicated.
No less serious questions are raised by the state of Lake Balkyldak, where Khimprom dumped its waste water. According to local ecologists, from 3 to 18 tons of mercury accumulated at its bottom like on a saucer. And how the underground waters in this area will behave over time, scientists can only guess. However, unlike the burial ground, the fate of the lake is generally of little concern. Meanwhile, according to the data of Pavlodar State University, the content of mercury in fish from Balkyldak averages about 7 MPC. Eating it is life-threatening. But the townspeople ignore the prohibitions and catch mutant crucians from the hoard. With a pug mouth, a Cyclops eye, and anomalies in fins and scales. There are nets of extreme fishing lovers all over the lake, its factory is not guarded. Balkyldak is quite a graphic picture ofwhat can happen to the Irtysh if the clay grave is destroyed.
“As long as the mercury is at the bottom of this lake, there can be no talk of stopping the monitoring,” says Viktor Tselyuk, head of the Omsk exploration expedition. - If the focus is not completely eliminated, an explosion can occur at any time. A rather small earthquake in the Almaty region and underground channels can change their direction.
According to researchers from several institutes, the lake is heavily drained by two thermal power plants located in the same industrial area. Their sludge ponds have long been overcrowded and have exceeded their service life. Now the accumulators of the two CHPPs are intensively feeding the reservoir, forming a flow of groundwater, which under unfavorable hydrogeological conditions can go around the wall in the ground and again move to the Irtysh.
But while some scientists call for an immediate resumption of the elimination of the hotbed of mercury pollution, others, on the contrary, argue that "the problem is not worth a damn."
For a long time, similar waste was also poured into the Kazakh river Nura. The contaminated silt at the bottom was going to be pumped out. But suddenly the mercury miraculously disappeared. Where? Unknown. But gone and okay. Perhaps the same will happen to the lake. And also the correspondent of "RG" was told that drinking a spoonful of mercury can be cured of some diseases. So no matter what, Balkyldak may also become a resort. And in any case, the rate of flow of groundwater is 10 meters per year. This means that even if the sarcophagus bursts, it will be possible to drink water from the Irtysh for at least 15 years …
A similar spill of mercury from manufacturing occurred in the Japanese city of Minamata in the last century. Then, local residents died en masse from an unknown and terrible disease, and in the vicinity of the city, children with serious deviations in the nervous system are still born. But scientists-skeptics for some reason do not remember this.