The Russian Prosecutor General's Office has ordered that supervision over the liquidation of environmental pollution be organized in the town of Usolye-Sibirskoye, which is located in the Irkutsk Region, the office said on Friday in a statement
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 31st July, 2020) The Russian Prosecutor General's Office has ordered that supervision over the liquidation of environmental pollution be organized in the town of Usolye-Sibirskoye, which is located in the Irkutsk Region, the office said on Friday in a statement.
Earlier this week, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that the Defense Ministry was ready to engage in an effort to eliminate environmental pollution in Usolye-Sibirskoye. In addition, the leader instructed the government to develop a roadmap to eliminate the environmental damage in three months.
"The Russian Prosecutor General's Office instructed the Baikal Interregional Environmental Prosecutor's Office to ensure proper supervisory support during the implementation of the Ecology national project, to assess the effectiveness and legality of spending budget funds, the quality and completeness of the elimination of the object of accumulated harm, formed as a result of the activities of the Usoliekhimprom enterprise in the town Usolye-Sibirskoye in the Irkutsk Region," the statement said.
The authority added that the exhaustive measures of the prosecutor's response would be taken immediately if needed.
At a videoconference on Thursday concerning the situation in the town, Putin called for urgent measures, noting that the "burden" of environmental problems had been accumulating there since the 1930s, and pointing to the catastrophic condition of the storage facilities housing chemical production waste. The president proposed that Rosatom be the sole contractor of works to eliminate environmental pollution in Usolye-Sibirskoye. According to the president, Rosatom has the needed personnel and competencies to perform such complex tasks.
The industrial site in Usolye-Sibirskoye was previously used for the production of chemical products by the Usoliekhimprom enterprise, which ceased production activities back in 2010. Following production termination, a significant amount of waste was placed in underground tanks, as a result of which soil and underground waters are saturated with hazardous chemicals.
