Huge Mercury Spill In Kiev
The residents
of the Ukrainian capital, Kiev, were sent into jitters after a huge mercury
spill at an abandoned chemical plant in the city's northeast, Russia's
NTV television network reported last week.
Kiev Mayor
Olexander Omelchenko called a press conference last week trying to play
down the significance of the accident.
NTV broadcast
footage depicted workers of Ukraine's Emergency Situations Ministry cleaning
up the site of accident at the Radikal chemical plant where approximately
100 tons of mercury had spilt over the last couple of days.
The salvage
workers wearing masks and special uniforms worked in four-hour shifts as
a longer presence at the scene posed a health risk, NTV said.
However, the
chiefs of the commission investigating the leak suggested that the media
should not hype up the accident and assured reporters that the entire quantity
of spilt mercury had already been collected.
At a press
conference, Omelchenko blamed the journalists for their coverage of the
accident.
"Informational
terrorism will soon become the most horrible (kind of terrorism)," Omelchenko
said. "We should start thinking how to defend ourselves from informational
terrorism."
Ukraine's independent
ecological organizations do not share placid forecasts of the Emergency
Situations Ministry.
"There is a
residential area and a kindergarten near that plant. We have had numerous
cases of residents sending appeals (to remove the plant)," Ukraine's Greens
Party spokesman Vitaly Kononov told NTV.
The state-owned
plant went bankrupt five years ago as hundreds of tons of mercury, chlorine,
hydrochloric acid and other harmful substances remained buried inside the
facility.
The cash-strapped
authorities couldn't provide funds to scrap the plant and remove the chemicals
that endangered the environment.
Meanwhile,
the mercury contaminated over 100,000 sqm of the factory's area, NTV said
citing a report by the Evrokhim company that researched the ecological
situation at Radikal.
Over the years
while the factory was operating, more than 700 tons of mercury were unaccounted
for with 100 tons discharged into the environment and 200 tons still contained
in the factory floors, the report added.
The plant was
built on the sands that facilitated penetration of mercury into underground
waters threatening to contaminate the nearby Dnepr River. The speed of
the mercury's spill toward the river is estimated at 100 meters per year.
Kiev's population
is not likely to believe the officials as similar accidents in the past
and present have largely undermined the common people's trust in the country's
leaders.
In 1986, Soviet
Ukraine's chiefs vehemently denied a nuclear fallout at the Chernobyl nuclear
power plant that was later dubbed the 20th century's worst nuclear disaster.
Over the past
two weeks, the Ukrainian public has been outraged by the authorities' attempt
to evade responsibility for the accidental hitting of a Russian jetliner
that crashed into the Black Sea Oct. 4.
Ukrainian Defense
Minister Olexander Kuzmuk offered his resignation for the second time in
two weeks as the results of the Russian government's investigation confirmed
that the jet was downed by a stray Ukrainian missile.
--
Copyright 2001 by United
Press International.
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