Five climbers hang a banner saying "Putin! Ban toxic discharges
to our rivers" on the bridge over Moskva river close to Baltschug
Kempinski hotel where HELCOM Ministerial Meeting 2010 is held
today. Activists in two inflatables deployed banners in Russian and
English saying "STOP polluting our rivers!" The same message to
Russian authorities carried Greenpeace ship "Beluga II" that
arrived to Russia to conduct a research on the concentration of the
certain hazardous substances in Russian waters.
Helsinki Convention on the Protection of the Marine Environment
of the Baltic Sea Area is the only international treaty to regulate
the discharge of the hazardous substances, which involves Russia.
Though HELCOM recommendations and standards are advisory, they are
not always implemented in the country. Specifically, Russia does
not provide information about the pollution of the Baltic Sea basin
happening on its territory.
To give HELCOM data on the water pollution in Russia Greenpeace
launched the Volga-Baltic expedition. Over the past two weeks,
Greenpeace experts took water samples from effluents discharging
into the Neva River, Slavyanka, Izhora, Svir, Sheksna, Yagorba,
Ladoga and Onega lakes, the Rybinsk Reservoir and the Volga. Water
samples were sent to the Russian laboratory for verifying the
content of hazardous substances in them. The first results were
announced yesterday onboard Beluga II.
Those samples were taken from the canal, transporting leakage
waters to the river Izhora, one of Neva river tributaries. Analyses
showed that water in the canal is toxic and contains heavy metals,
phtalates, PCBs and phenols. Concentrations of these substances are
10 or 100 times above Russian maximum permissible levels. For
example mercury level was 56 above maximum permissible level and
phenols - 2100 times. PCBs in 650 times exceeded maximum
permissible levels.
"It is extremely important for Russia to implement the
recommendations of HELCOM concerning hazardous substances to stop
river pollution", says Alexei Kiselev, head of Greenpeace Russia
toxic program.
Greenpeace is therefore calling on the Russian Federation to
take four essential and urgent steps towards meeting its
obligations under the convention and prevent any further
contamination:
1.Start immediate monitoring of at least the Helcom priority
hazardous chemicals (see annex 1) and regularly reporting of the
monitoring results, to both Helcom and the public (for example
through a publically available pollutant database).
2. Implement the Helcom recommendations on measures, such as
applying best available techniques for various sectors, including
substitution of hazardous chemicals, that would start the
reductions towards elimination of hazardous chemicals, not just for
the Baltic but for the whole country.
3. Transpose the prohibition of the discharge of hazardous
chemicals into municipal sewer systems into a government decree in
2011.
4. Ratify three important supporting conventions - the Stockholm
convention on POP's, the Rotterdam convention restricting imports
of hazardous chemicals and the Aarhus convention on access to
information and justice (starting with the PRTR Kiev protocol on
the access to data on hazardous chemical emissions).