The World's Most Radiated River [in Photographs]

I would like to share with you an absolutely tremendous picture story by Robert Knoth, a freelance photographer, who is also an author of "Certificate no. 000358", a book which documents the impact of nuclear disasters on people in the former USSR.

You can find more photographs by clicking the link above..

Kostya has Down syndrome, is sick often and had to have his fingers separated through surgery. His mother Ludmilla swam in Techa River when she was young, the village was contaminated by the explosion in 1957.

Alexander has a mental handicap and lives in an orphanage. Many children in the region are born with mental problems due to the high doses of radiation their parents received. Few parents can financially support their sick children.

Karl Marx Street in Muslumovo. This is one of the main streets of the village close to Techa River. The street is almost totally abandoned because radiation levels are too high.

"I don't like to go to school, because the boys call me bad names. I would like to court the girls, but they shun me and donít want to go out with me. I hope I will not have children who look like me"

Aral Sea

The ship "graveyard" in Karakalpakstan

Even though the name of this blog suggested that my analysis will be based around Russia only, the case study of Aral sea could not be ignored as it is a terrifying representation of land and water management combined together in the Soviet Union. Therefore, I’ve decided to extend my geographical constraints for today and to have a look at the lands of Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, all of which are former USSR countries. 

The Aral Sea, once the fourth largest inland water body on earth, has become well-known to the world as one of the planet’s worst environmental disasters. It shows how the lack of long-term planning in chase of economic benefit can ruin the ecosystem and harm the society. 

The lake has been steadily shrinking, starting from the early 1960s, when the Soviet government decided to diverge two main rivers that fed the Aral sea, in the attempt to boost cotton production, which they used to call «white gold». Eventually, the Sea has shrunk by approximately 65-70% in volume and 50-60% leading to the extinction of various species and the change of region’s climate. 

The Aral Sea timeline:

Before 1960: 

• The construction of irrigation canals began, many of which are poorly built and allow for water leak. For instance, the Qaraqum Canal allows for 30 to 75% of the water go to waste. 
• The surface area of the Sea is currently over 66, 000 km², with the maximum length of 494 km and maximum width of 290 km. The total extent of the shoreline is nearly 3,000 km. The mean depth is about 16m, with the maximum depth reaching up to 69m. The water salinity is 10%.

The Aral Sea Before 1960s

1960s:

• Water is drawn off at numerous points along the Amu Darya and Syr Darya in Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan on their way to the Aral Sea. As much as 20 to 60 cubic kilometres of water is going to the land, so the Sea only gets 20 cubic kilometres in the most favourable years. At the same time, the water evaporates at the 33-36 cubic kilometres per year. 
• There is not enough inflow to sustain the same water level, the Aral sea begins to shrink.

1970s:

• The water level falls at an average rate of 50-60 cm per year.
• Engineers in the capital of Turkmenistan are trying to prevent the city from being flooded by seepage from Qaraqum canal by drilling 150 relief wells. 
• The use of inadequate irrigation system has led to the major leak 200 kilometres southwest of Aral, creating Lake Sarakamysh. 

1980s:

• The water level falls at an average rate of 80-90 cm per year.
• As the water has fallen, its salinity has increased dramatically up to 27%, thereby wiping out 20 out of 24 species of fish.
• USSR Goskomstat reports that an average hectare of agricultural land in the region had received over one-half ton of airborne salt, leading to the destruction of crops and forests. 
• One-half of all irrigated land in Uzbekistan is now suffering from saline conditions.
• The region’s cotton planation are now dependent on a fertilisers because the soil is depleted of nutrients. In Turkmenistan the use of pesticide is at 20-25 times the Soviet average. 

The Salt And The Toxic Chemicals Accumulated At The Seabed

1990s:

• The water level dropped by more than 15 meters, the sea has shrunk to half of it’s normal size, causing the sea to split into two: "Little Aral" to the north fed by the Syr Darya, and "Big Aral" in the south fed by the Amu Darya.
• The Aral Sea is fast becoming the Aral Desert. This leads to the change of climate - the summer heat has become hotter and drier and winters are more severe. 
• The intense use of fertilisers and pesticides has contaminated groundwater supplies. At the same time, the settlements along the lower reaches of the Amu Darya in Karakalpakistan must draw up to two- thirds of their drinking water from the river. 
• The region has turned into «slow Chernobyl» with increased infant mortality rate, typhoid fever, tuberculosis and viral hepatitis outbreaks.  
• The Aral Sea’s surface is only 17,160 km² . The five-fold increase in salinity has killed most of it’s flora and fauna.

2000s:

• The rescue program has been launched by Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbayev back in 2001. The 13 km long dam has been constructed in order to separate the smaller North Aral Sea from the larger and more polluted southern part. In this way, Kazakhstan is able to keep all the water coming from the Syr Darya, which has been supplied with rehabilitated waterworks along it.
• The North Aral Sea's surface increased from 2,550 km² in 2003 to 3,300 km² in 2008.

• The South Aral Sea has been abandoned as the Uzbekistan government is more interested in extracting oil from the drying seabed.

North Aral Sea Rescue Program

The sad story of the Aral Sea is now repeated in other parts of the world. For instance, disappearing Lake Chad in Africa and the Salton Sea in California.

"Sorry, Aral [region]!"

Do you have any questions? What topic would you like to be covered next? Comment below.

The Land: Chemicalization of Agriculture

Pesticides tend to be the most serious problem in those countries that have a strong agro-chemical industry as well as agricultural and forestry sectors that are characterised by monocultures and a goal of high labor productivity, which is a precise description of what was happening in USSR. 

"Sweetcorn is a source of abundance"

The Soviet leaders strongly promoted «the chemicalization of agriculture», which was believed to make the USSR self-sufficient in agricultural production. In 1965 the country produced 31.2 million tons of fertilisers, and in 1975, this number already reached 90 million tons. In 1986, pesticides were used on 87% of all arable land in the USSR. 

It is known that pesticides have been frequently misused and overused in the USSR, which often led to accidental kills of various animals. For instance, in 1979 the misapplication of zinc phosphide killed 169 geese at a collective farm near Rostov. The similar reports have been appearing all over the country at different times.

One of the main dangers of pesticides is their ability to build up to significant concentrations over time and remain in the environment for many years. From 1950 to 1970, more than 20,000 tonnes of DDT were used annually in the Soviet Union, pesticide known for it’s high potential to bioaccumulate, especially in the body fat of higher mammals. It is hazard to environment, both to those areas where it has been used directly and the regions thousands of kilometres away. Although there is still lack of knowledge on the potential harm of DDT to humans, some studies suggested an association between DDT and certain cancers.

Despite the official ban in 1970, DDT continued to be used until late 1980s. Following the fall of communism in 1991, many pesticide stores were left unattended and have since collapsed, threatening environment. An inspection by the local agency of Tomsk in 2002-2003 discovered 3 tons of DDT stored in local hangars, with reports that some DDT had leaked out into the surroundings.

The problem with intensive use of highly toxic pesticides in the former Soviet Union is that after the state has collapsed, Russia has lost the trace of where farm pesticides have been stored, which are estimated to exceed 250,000 tonnes. This means there are large amount of health-threatening toxins buried around the country still to be detected. 

The Land

Like other natural resources in the Soviet Union, agricultural land suffered heavily from the extensive nature of its exploitation. 

Many problems can be traced to the Virgin Lands Programme instituted in the 1953 by Nikita Khrushchev. Not many people know what Nikita Khrushchev’s wife has died young from starvation in the terrible famine in 1921, which might have left a lifelong concern for food and agriculture in his mind over his career at communist party. 

Virgin Land postcard

Dissatisfied with the low yields on existing farmland, Khrushchev initiated a drive to open up vast new tracts of land in order to alleviate the food shortages plaguing the Soviet populace. 

These «virgin lands» (northern Kazakhstan and western Siberia) were put under the plough at an unparalleled intensity and scale. By the end of 1954, 17.6 million ha had been converted to croplands; a total of 30 million was reached by the end of 1955, of which 20 million were cultivated.

During it first two years, the Virgin Lands Programme recorded with positive and negative impacts. Grain productivity sharply increased, but soil degradation processes, especially wind erosion on the sandy lands, cleared of their natural vegetation. Most of the virgin lands were grassland of marginal quality and not allowed to lie fallow for long periods.

Though the program was abandoned, as it hasn't proved to be very sustainable, these marginal lands continued to be cropped continuously as farmers were under constant pressure to boost output. As a result, an average of 30–50 percent of the humus was lost, turning parts of southern Siberia and northern Kazakhstan into a virtual dust bowl. 

The Water: Lake Baikal

Lake Baikal

Perhaps, when you think about water pollution in Russia today, a first thing that comes up to your mind is the case of world-famous lake Baikal. 

Lake Baikal is the largest freshwater lake in the world, with a maximum depth of 1,642 meters. It is covering 31,500 square kilometres which makes it larger in size than Belgium state. It is fed by 336 rivers and was formed around 25 million years ago, long time before human history has even begun. 

The unique chemistry that occurs here (due to it’s relatively low oxygen content, and it’s unique tectonic origin) have not only produced crystal clear waters but also created an isolated aquatic environment. As a result, more than two-thirds of the 2,400 different plants and animals living in the lake are found nowhere else in the world.

Some of these species have been hunted by humans which put them under the threat of extinction. For example, the nerpa (Pusa siberica) is a unique freshwater seal, which is able to swim for over 70 minutes and dive up to 300 metres below water surface. Sadly enough, it is highly valued for it’s meat and skins. 

Nerpas are also affected by the intensive industrial pollution of the lake. In 1980s, thousands of these animals have been reported to die from a morbillivirus, an outcome of immune system worsening due to the heavy metals exposure.

Nerpa baby

Nerpa baby - 2

Scientific Value

The Lake Baikal is a highly precious site for the scientists. The Baikal rift zone has never been glaciated which led to accumulation of over 7500 m of sediment, which can be used to reconstruct the past environmental change in the lake from as far as 5 million years ago. 

Threat Of Pollution

Baikal is threatened by three types of pollution: 

1) Because of the problems with the sewage system in Ulan-Ude, the city dumps almost 500 tons of nitrates into the water—70 percent of all nitrates entering the basin. Baikal Pulp and Paper emitted 32 million cubic meters of wastewater directly into Baikal in 1987. To make the case worse, there are hundreds of small enterprisers around the lake that have to wastewater management capacity at all. As a result, Baikal has been accumulating large quantities of phenols, petroleum-based substances, detergents, suspended particulates, and other substances.

2) Due to intensive timber exploration, there has been an increased rate of erosion and runoff from surrounding lands. In the post-World War II era, the Soviet government facilitated the rapid exploitation of the region’s agricultural and forest resources with the expansion of traffic along the Trans-Siberian Railway to the south of Lake Baikal, and construction of the Baikal-Amur Mainline Railroad to the north. As a result, the soil has tended to become compacted and prone to erosion because of overgrazing and the cultivation of pastureland.

3) Industrial plants situated along the Angara River churn out aluminium, wood and paper products, and chemicals. Cities such as Irkutsk, Angarsk, Shelekhov, and Bratsk suffer high concentrations of formaldehyde, benzopyrene, nitrogen oxides. These pollutants are then blown over the lake and its watershed by the prevailing winds, further contributing towards Lake Baikal pollution. 

Important Lesson For The Whole World

  It is clear that Lake Baikal is an environmental experiment which determines the extent of the spread of manmade pollutants. Although, taking into account the levels of pollution, Lake Baikal remains in fairly pristine condition. This is largely the result of its tremendous size.  Its size, however, is what led to the pollution in the first place.  For years, many Soviet officials believed that factories would not harm the lake; its size would dissolve the chemicals harmlessly.

Today, however, the issue around Lake Baikal pollution continues to exists. In 2010, former Prime Minister and current President of Russian Federation Vladimir Putin came first as "Baikal's worst enemy" in the contest organised by the Greenpeace. Putin's victory can be explained by his role in the re-opening of the Baikalsk Paper and Pulp mill, which emits 100,000 cubic metres of waste into the lake every year. Instead, what environmentalists suggested is that Lake Baikal should be turned into a tourists attractions with campsites and health resorts in the surrounding area. 

Baikal has become a symbol of environmental dangers and international participation and funding are crucial to salvaging the Siberian Pearl. The experience we have from the lake Baikal case encourages the world to combat water pollution elsewhere.

The Water: Mother Volga

There is a river system in Russia which deserves particular attention of my readers and it is infamous «Mother Volga». Not everyone realises that Volga is the largest European river, accounting for the area, which is two and a half times size of France.

In USSR, the emphasis was put on developing industrial clusters. One of such clusters is Volga basin, which is now the most economically developed region of Russia, accounting for 40% of the Russian population, 45% of the country’s industry and 50% of it’s agriculture.

Mother Volga Monument

The water quality problems in this region are most severe in Russia, as constant toxic contamination coming from industrial wastewater and domestic and agricultural sewage water started many decades ago (see my previous blog entry). The Volga basin account for 1/3 of all water pollution in Russia, however the issue has not received a very widespread coverage in Russian scientific media so far.

- Industrial, Agricultural and Domestic pollution

The Volga is being polluted right from the very upstream reaches. There is a number of large cities located along it’s stream such as Astrakhan, Volgograd, Saratov, Samara, Kazan, Ulyanovsk, Nizhny Novgorod, Yaroslavl and Tver. As you move down the stream, every town and factory within it further adds up to the poisoning of the river. The overall pollutant load in 1997 consisted of 1.6 million tonnes of sulphates, 169,500 tonnes of particulate matter and 126,000 tonnes of organic compounds. Volga still remains severally polluted today. In 2001 the river received the following quantities of pollutants: oil products - 2 370 tonnes; suspended matter - 164 540 tonnes; sulphates - 736 460 tonnes and many other components of Mendeleev table.

Volgograd

Furthermore, every year there are some records about accidental oil spills appearing on the news. For instance, in 2008, a 1 kilometer-long oil stain was detected in the Chernoyarsk region of Astrahanska Oblast, which weighted over 32 kg. In July 2009, 2 tons of fuel oil were spilled as a result of a tanker wreck in Samara Oblast, forming a 10 kilometre oil stain on the water’s surface. 

Agricultural discharge from the nearby farms adds even more mineral, organic and toxic pollutants, which enter the main stream through the minor tributaries.

Hydroelectric Dams

Construction of hydroelectric power stations was accompanied by creation if over 300 reservoirs, adding up to a total volume of 110 cubic km. The Volga has been transformed from a free-flowing river into a long chain of water reservoirs, which caused water exchange within the drainage basin to slow down by 12 times. Just imagine that before the construction work began the water from the river source reached Volgograd in 50 days, however, by the 1990s it took 400-500 days to pass the same distance. 

The slow pace causes toxic pollutants to accumulate in the 8 main reservoirs and to settle on the riverbed - some parts of the river exceed the allowable limit of petroleum byproducts concentration by 100 times. This often trigger a process called «self-pollution», which means that even after the pollutant discharged has been stopped, the pollution continues due to the large amounts of of industrial, agricultural and domestic wastes stored at the bottom of reservoir. 

Effects of Pollution

Predictably, such changes in hydrological regime led to decreasing fish populations in the river. Large dams along the river eliminated many spawning grounds of transitory fish such as Caspian lamprey, shads, sturgeons, inconnu as well as worsened the conditions for survival. 

Fish are also known to be highly sensitive indicators of aquatic environment and ecosystem health. Pathological changes in fish organs help to determine the toxicity of water contaminants and the potential dangers. The chronic exposure of fish to the numerous toxic substances in the water led to the different types of pathology and dysfunction in their organisms.

The recent data collected by UNEP in 2007 shows that 90% of fish residing in Volga were mutant, while in 2008 the number increased to 100% for some kinds of fish.

In 2011, Russian regional parliamentarians addressed an official letter to then-president Dmitriy Medvedev requesting to take an action on «saving the Volga». However, even after having spend hours and hours browsing through official data, whether any investments into combating this issue will be made, remains very unclear to me.

Medvedev Taking Bath In River Volga

The Water

Stalinist industrialisation put a great pressure on the urban infrastructure. Nevertheless, as the inflow of workers into cities grew significantly, none of the investments were diverted into improving urban environments. 

Only some of the major Russian cities had sewerage systems, while everywhere else around the country human and animal excrement was left to wash away during the rain. But even sewerage systems often didn't help, as the water was being discharged back in the river with no treatment at all. 

The Soviet Union lagged some 30 to 50 years behind such countries as Britain, France or Germany, compensating instead the absence of adequate level of sanitation by immunisation and antibiotics against water-borne diseases (e.g tuberculosis, pneumonia, gastro-enteric infections).

Apart from the risk of catching disease, the urban residents in USSR had to cope with the difficulties associated with the lack of indoor piped water. The routine tasks such as laundering, washing and cooking required significant amount of time and energy, adding to already difficult living conditions ( e.g. working long hours in the under-heated factories and walking long distances to work, in the absence of adequate public transport).

By the end of the 1930s the impact of industrialisation on country’s water supplies was beginning to attract attention. Unfortunately, not because of it’s harm to human health, but because of the economic damage it was causing to the factories and fishing industry. 

For instance, in winter, the chemical pollution in Oka, Northern Donets and Viatka was so strong, that fish would die from oxygen starvation while the discharge from a single factory like the Nizhnii Tagil coke-oven products factory could eliminate fish in the River Tagil over a 200-300 km radius.

Northern Donets

Furthermore, the organisation of water supplies in the Ural region was so inefficient that the pollution of rivers by upstream factories made them unusable for the ones downstream, not talking about the health impacts it implied.

However, none of the attempts by Soviet government to instal anti-pollution equipment succeeded. Waste treatment considered to be of a minor importance to the ones in power, so often the installation process could not be completed due to lack of building materials or labour power. 

Christopher Burton’s «Destalinization as detoxification? The expert debate on industrial toxins under Khrushchev» highlights that often Soviets were guided by two misleading environmental concepts:

1. A belief that powerful rivers are «self-cleansing» and able to dilute industrial waste, and
2. the idea that there was a maximum allowable concentrations of toxins (предельно допустимые концентрации).

These concepts ignored the facts that any amount of toxins tend to build up over time in surrounding flora and fauna and that toxins can interact to produce even more dangerous substances. Whether the Soviet Government truly believed in their truthfulness or used these theories as excuse - remains an open question. 

The main point here is that the policies and behaviour regarding water pollution back in Stalin era could be responsible for an ecological catastrophe that occurred later in 1980s and still persist today.

Reference:

Filtzer, Donald (2009) "Poisoning the Proletariat : Urban Water Supply and RiverPollution in Russia's Industrial Regions during Late Stalinism,1945-1953"

Introduction

If we compare the planet with a communal apartment, we occupy the dirtiest room.

—Aleksei Yablokov, environmental adviser to President Boris Yeltsin

Regions of Environmental Degradation Within Former Soviet Union

The story of Russian ecology goes back to the past at the times when a former Soviet Union was a world’s largest state as well as the world’s most ambitious government which felt that pollution control was an unnecessary hindrance to economic development and industrialisation. 

Soviet poster representing a female worker and the "Day by day happier life" slogan

The Soviet society adopted the anthropocentric worldview which implies that the natural resources are merely a building material for everybody's "better future".

The environmentally threatening incidents (e.g the Siberian pipeline sabotage or Kyshtym radiological disaster) received no public notice due to censorship. The remedial measures taken were mostly slow, as government believed that the land could easily absorb any level of pollution. 

Therefore, it comes as no surprise that after the Soviet Union collapsed and the documents were finally revealed to the public, Russia had to admit that it was around 40% of it’s territory to be considered as under high risk of ecological stress. 

The citizens of the former Soviet industrial centres (e.g Magnitorsk, Novokuznetsk, Astrakhan) have now been struggling from tremendous air and water pollution, deforestation and the various skin diseases as well as disruption of metabolic processes among children, all as a result of environmental degradation. 

Magnitorsk

This blog is going to look at the number of case studies and research papers in order to understand the challenge that Russia is facing today. The topics to be covered include water and air quality, radioactive contamination, soils and forests. 

Even though some of the conditions that occurred in Russia are truly unique, if we were to put this situation in the global context it would become clear that the similar problems are faced by most of the countries around the world.