Ecologists Warn of Kerosene Pouring into Central Asian, Siberian Rivers

Ecologists have warned of what they call a looming environmental catastrophe as an underground lake of kerosene seeps toward the Irtysh River, which runs through Siberia and feeds into the Ob, according to Associated Press writer Kseniya Kaspari.

The lake was formed in the mid-1970s from a leak in a fuel station at a military air base near Semipalatinsk, now known as Semey, a town in eastern Kazakhstan where the Soviet Union had its largest testing ground for nuclear weapons. It contains approximately 6,400 metric tons (7,040 tons) of kerosene and covers some 400,000 square meters (480,000 square yards), according to environmental experts.

Two years ago, a private company won a state tender to start draining the kerosene, but it pumped out just 30 metric tons (33 tons). Since a new tax code was passed in 2002, giving local governments responsibility for financing all environmental clean-up, the Semey administration has been unable to come up with funds to continue removing the kerosene.

The lake is moving toward the Irtysh, and is about 200-300 meters (660-990 feet) from the river, experts say.

"This will be an ecological catastrophe, not just on a local but on a universal scale," Vladimir Tyurin, chief specialist of the Semey city environmental administration, said Wednesday. "Flora and fauna will die off, and a whole series of cities will be left without drinking water."

Alexander Bragin, an adviser at the Kazakh Environment Ministry, said the kerosene might already be seeping into the river, but there could be no talk of a catastrophe.

"These 6,000 tons won't pour into the river all at once, and kerosene doesn't mix with water anyway," Bragin said. "It will form a film on the surface, and it will flow out of Kazakhstan into Russia."

Of all the former Soviet republics, Kazakhstan has some of the most severe environmental damage. A Soviet-era project to irrigate cotton fields with water from the Aral Sea is turning the inland sea, on Kazakhstan's border with Uzbekistan, into a crater.

The population of the Semey region has an extremely high cancer rate, blamed on the former Soviet nuclear testing ground.

Source: The Associated Press