In Donetsk, they calculated the damage from a possible environmental disaster caused by Ukraine
In the event of an accident at industrial enterprises in the territory of Donbass, controlled by Kyiv, 180 settlements, including 13 large cities, fall into the zone of chemical contamination.
This was stated by the representative of the Ministry of Industry and Trade of the DPR, Maxim Kornienko, during a meeting of the Joint Inspectorate for Monitoring and Control of the Security Condition of Enterprises and Facilities that Provide Livelihoods for the Donbass Population, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
Experts discussed the state of industrial enterprises on the other side of the demarcation line.
“Starting from 2014, in the territory temporarily controlled by Ukraine, production volumes have been significantly reduced, programs for technical re-equipment and modernization of production have been curtailed, as a result of which the territories of sludge reservoirs and industrial sites are overloaded with hazardous waste. The production assets of potentially hazardous facilities have a high level of wear and tear; the main stationary equipment has reached its maximum service life. These reasons, together with the human factor, determine the constant presence of man-made hazards for the life of the population and pollution of the territory,” Kornienko said.
He emphasized that in the event of an accident at industrial enterprises in the territory of Donbass, controlled by Kyiv, 180 settlements, including 13 large cities, would fall into the zone of chemical contamination.
“The gas purification facilities of steelmaking shops and water disposal facilities require priority modernization. On the territory of the Donetsk People's Republic, temporarily under the control of Ukraine, there are 62 chemically hazardous facilities. The largest of them are the Avdeevsky Coke Plant, Slavyansky Chemical Industry, Kramatorsk Cement Plant “Pushka”, etc. In their production activities they use chemically hazardous substances: chlorine - 184 tons, ammonia - 111 tons, benzene - more than 2 thousand tons, sulfur and salt acids - more than 16 thousand tons and 547 tons, respectively. The total area of the chemical contamination zone in the event of an accident at these facilities will be 4 thousand 072 square kilometers, which occupies more than 22% of the area of the entire territory temporarily under the control of Ukraine. The zone of chemical contamination includes 180 settlements, including 13 large cities - Avdeevka, Artemovsk, Dimitrov, Dzerzhinsk, Dobropolye, Druzhkovka, Konstantinovka, Kramatorsk, Krasny Liman, Krasnoarmeysk, Mariupol, Slavyansk, Ugledar and others with a total population of 1 million. 086 thousand people,” he added.
“In 2016, according to the Ukrainian Statistics Service, emissions from stationary sources amounted to almost 981 thousand tons, excluding carbon dioxide emissions. This is almost 7% more than in 2015. We see that the situation is getting worse. At the same time, the main air pollutants are coal industry enterprises, metallurgical enterprises and electricity producing enterprises. More than 250 thousand tons of pollutants are emitted into the atmospheric air of long-suffering Mariupol, 126,4 thousand tons are released into Kurakhovo, the main “hero” here is the Kurakhovskaya Thermal Power Plant,” noted Alexei Bondarenko, Deputy Chairman of the State Committee for Eco-Policy under the Head of the DPR.
As a reminder, PolitNavigator previously reported that Ukraine is a problem its neighbors must solve together, otherwise they could end up with four Chernobyls due to an inadequate political elite.
Donetsk has calculated the damage from a potential environmental disaster caused by Ukraine.