Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova Choking On Toxic Waste

[Pastor Dale Morgan]

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Perilous Times

Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova Choking On Toxic Waste*

Prague (AFP) May 2*5*, 2007

Toxic waste, water pollution and the legacy of Chernobyl have plunged
Ukraine and neighbouring Moldova and Belarus into an environmental
crisis, according to the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in
Europe (OSCE). In a report released in Prague this week, the OSCE said
contaminated military sites were also a festering problem.

"Ukraine has approximately 2.5 millions tonnes of Soviet-era ammunition
that requires disposal, including four burial grounds for radioactive
waste", said the report.

The break-up of the Soviet Union had solved some environmental problems,
but exacerbated others because of lax regulation and increased
exploitation of natural resources, it said.

The application of stricter EU environmental standards in Slovakia and
Hungary, Ukraine's neighbours, has resulted in attempts to export
environmental problems across their eastern borders.

The report aimed to help "identify the most dangerous points and to
enhance awareness," Bernard Soy, Coordinator of OSCE Economic and
Environmental Activities, told AFP.

"Future generation will not forgive us if we sacrifice the environment
to short-term political concerns," the report said.

Up to 10 percent of Ukrainian waste disposal sites belonging to the
military require major repairs, the report said, pointing to a series of
accidental explosions between 2004 and 2006 at the Novobohdanivka
arsenal in the south of the country.

In Belarus, "the most serious environmental problem concerns the
liquidation of armaments and munitions inherited from the Soviet Union,
including toxic and radioactive material", the OSCE said.

During the Soviet era, military sites covered 300,000 hectares (741,000
acres), mostly forests. These had now been abandonded, leaving local
authorities to clean up oil products in the soil and deal with high
levels of electromagnetic radiation.

Moldova's military legacy included around 20,000 tonnes of arms and
munitions stocked at the Cobasna station in Transnistria which are also
hard to get rid of. "The simultaneous explosion of such quantities of
ammunition may trigger an environmental and humanitarian disaster," the
report warned.

Regarding industrial waste, experts found 8,000 tonnes of obsolete
pesticides in Belarus and around 20,000 tonnes in Ukraine, of which
11,000 tonnes consist of hexachlorobenzene (HCB) and 2,000 tonnes of
DDT, both posing "a long term danger for the environment and health."

Most of Ukraine's 6,000 storage sites were "inadequately built, poorly
guarded facilities in a deteriorating state of repair", usually without
any documentation.

On top of one million tonnes of industrial waste, Moldova also has 8,000
tonnes of toxic residues, often "stored illegally and in a disorganised
fashion contributing to land and water contamination," according to the
OSCE.

In Belarus, 778 million tonnes of mining waste in the Soligorsk region
are exposed to wind and water erosion which causes a build-up of salt in
the soil, threatening the river Pripyat with contamination.

Water quality is also a problem. In Ukraine, 39 percent of waste water
is estimated to be polluted and about 25 percent goes into the
environment without any kind of prior treatment.

In Moldova, up to half of ground water is contaminated "beyond all
acceptable levels". It's even worse for surface water, affected by a
wide variety of pollutants including ammonia, nitrites, phenols and oil
products, the OSCE said.

Source: Agence France-Presse