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All the data collected by this patrol will go to appropriate authorities and be immediately published on www.saveneva.ru.
The Water Patrol crew is going to collect samples, identify illegal discharges and spills from industrial facilities and ships, make rapid response to industrial accidents. All samples collected will be sent to certified labs for analysis. For some of the samples the crew will make a quick analysis of integrated toxicity.
This is the third year of the Greenpeace water patrol work in St. Petersburg. All Peterburgers are again invited to take part in this activity. Every person can help Greenpeace in saving the Neva from contamination by reporting to Greenpeace via an internet form (available on the web page) about any spills, leakages or discharges that people take notice of. After receiving a complaint rapid reaction is guaranteed and Greenpeace will see that the authorities be working to investigate the source and to put appropriate fines on perpetrators.
Last two years were very successful for Greenpeace patrolling the Neva. The Patrol results have pushed the authorities to initiate numerous investigations against violators of the existing water legislation. Data collected by Greenpeace showed high contamination of waste waters discharged by different types of industries through the municipal sewer system. After publishing this data the city sewer system operator – Vodokanal of St. Petersburg was held publicly liable for not cleaning up the discharges. Vodokanal started an audit of all discharges in St. Petersburg in order to prevent or even eliminate contamination of the municipal sewage system by industrial chemicals.
Waste water treatment plants in St. Petersburg were not designed to remove hazardous chemicals from the water. This is why it is extremely important to prevent any discharges, leakages and effluents of industrial waste waters into the municipal sewer system. Greenpeace hopes that the city’s polluters will look into what they discharge and eliminate hazardous chemicals from their waste waters in order to prevent any further contamination of the Neva – the only water source for St. Petersburg.
Greenpeace is the only organization in St. Petersburg that maintains real-time control over industrial discharges and leakages. The past experience shows that state authorities have no capacity for rapid reaction to industrial discharges, leakages and accidents.
Notes to editors
Greenpeace is also going to monitor direct effluents of local industry and waste water treatment plants for hazardous substances like BFRs, heavy metals, phthalates, PCBs which has already been identified in the Russian Refuse Report published by Greenpeace Science Unit in 2008. These substances are highly toxic, can accumulate in the tissues of living organisms and are very persistent. Despite the fact that international community pays great attention to such substances there is no such monitoring in the Russian Federation. The Russian system of water monitoring remains in 80s years of the 20th century. Probably because of this Russia is not taking part in the Baltic sea monitoring of hazardous substances organized by Helcom.
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