Greenpeace activists perambulated the Usinsk region every day to document all uncleared or poorly reclaimed oil spills. They found 125, from very fresh to those which have happened more than a decade ago. The area of each spill is up to several thousand square meters. According to the press service of "Greenpeace Russia", following the results of the inspection Greenpeace will file a complaint to the supervisory authorities, demanding to bring the perpetrators of accidents to justice.
“Instead of eliminating the spill and recovering the soil, as required by regulations, companies often simply covered oil up with sand or soil. This leads to the poisoning of land in an area of thousands of hectares, pollution of rivers and groundwater. To stop this irresponsible practice, it is necessary to eliminate gaps in the law that allow perpetrators of accidents to spill oil with impunity,” the head of the patrol group Vasily Yablokov said.
Besides, volunteers began to clean one of the spills, to demonstrate that to clean up the consequences of accidents is much harder than to prevent them. After a week fifteen volunteers managed to collect more than 50 tons of oil and sludge with the help of vacuum pumps, shovels and buckets. Waste was sent for processing to a specialized company.
Oil patrol that Greenpeace and the Save the Pechora Commttee carry out in the Republic of Komi and Nenets Autonomous District will continue until August 22. Its goal is to draw attention to the problem of oil spills that Russian government and companies can’t solve for many years and to achieve the appropriate changes in the law.
In August 19 environmental authorities and the oil companies will discuss the recommendations of Greenpeace to fight oil spills at the round table in Usinsk.
