Arctic Wake-Up Call

Norilsk, in northern Siberia, the global capital for nickel and palladium production, has long been known as one of the most polluted cities on Earth. For decades, the local landscape has been polluted by sulphur dioxide spewing out of industrial chimneys. Local rivers have many times literally run red as a result of factory chemical runoff or accidents. So, in a way, when in May locals reported yet another spill, it was business as usual.

And yet, when environmentalists sounded the alarm this time about a spill of diesel fuel from a power station reserve tank near Nadezhda Metallurgical Plant, the government response was uncharacteristically serious. President Vladimir Putin chided officials on live television for waiting two days to respond to the accident.

“So what do we do? You’re the governor!” he said to Alexander Uss, governor of Krasnoyarsk Krai, sounding genuinely confused as to how a disaster of this scope could go unnoticed.

At press time, it was not clear why local authorities failed to escalate a disaster response when the ultimate owner of the tank, Norilsk Nickel, sent them an alert about the emergency situation. Perhaps they thought it had been contained. Perhaps the company unofficially assured them there was nothing to worry about. After all, in Norilsk, the company is king. Even employees of the state environmental watchdog RosPrirodNadzor could not initially get to the site: Norilsk Nickel’s security blocked their access.

“What happened, and why did government agencies only find out about it after two days? What is this – are we supposed to find out about emergency situations from social media? Is everything alright over there with your health?

– President Vladimir Putin, in an unusual display of anger over an environmental disaster, after fuel spilled from a reservoir owned by a subsidiary of Norilsk Nickel. (kremlin.ru)

In the end, at least 15,000 tons of fuel spewed into the Daldykan and Ambarnaya rivers, and another 6,000 tons despoiled the tundra landscape. Ambarnaya feeds into Pyasino Lake, which is the source of the Pyasina River, which crosses the Taimyr Peninsula and empties into the Arctic Ocean. In the time Norilsk Nickel wasted trying to stop the spill on its own, the huge fuel slick had all but reached the lake, where it would be nearly impossible to clean up. Responders managed to put up barriers, stopping the worst of the spread, though some say the toxins merely dissolved in the water or sunk below the barriers.

A lot of Russia’s industrial infrastructure is in a state similar to the faulty reserve tank that caused this disaster. In photos, the reservoir is rust-colored, and the landscape around it looks ashen, nothing like typical tundra. The state technical safety watchdog said it had been unable to check the condition of the tank in question for four years, because the company reported that it was being repaired (how that was possible while it was storing fuel is not clear).

Norilsk Nickel has alleged that the spill was due to permafrost melt during the unusually warm spring, that destabilized the reservoir’s foundation. This could well be, but natural factors merely supplement human ones. And global warming is usually held up as a boon for the region’s waterborne navigation, making natural resources more accessible.

Indeed, the Arctic is viewed in Russia as a treasure trove of natural resources, a place where many workers come to make a quick buck in mining or other extraction-related industries, then head back to warmer climes. Clearly, a spare diesel storage container was not a top priority for this publicly-traded company. Paying to monitor structural damage – which may or may not occur anytime soon – is not an investment that tends to pay off in the short term.

Meanwhile, the impact of melting permafrost is a danger long discussed by permanent residents of these Arctic regions: in Yakutia, the regional parliament actually passed a law to protect the permafrost – something that is hoped may inject forward-thinking in construction and safety regulations. Permafrost, an incredibly solid composite of ice and sand that is a mile deep in parts of the Arctic, turns to mush when it melts, destabilizing anything on the surface: pipelines, buildings, freshwater lakes, toxic waste sites.

Overall, the incident is an unpleasant wake-up call for Russians – who, on top of recession and coronavirus, have been buffeted by sanctions – that their Soviet-era industries throughout Siberia may need large financial injections if similar disasters are to be avoided in future.