1 billion rubles to be spent on reclamation of sludge damps in Sterlitamak
Sludge damps near Sterlitamak are to undergo reclamation, and it’s planned to allocate 1 billion rubles to that, as stated by the Deputy General Director for Technical Policy of Bashkir Soda Company (BSK) JSC Fyodor Afanasyev at an international scientific conference on topical problems of organic and inorganic synthesis in Sterlitamak.
According to him, the development of a project for the reclamation of two sections of the «white sea» sludge collectors will begin next year.
“Their territory occupies a little more than 200 hectares, these are the oldest sections and almost 95% of their resource have been spent. Reclamation stages include natural drainage of the liquid in the compartments of the sludge collectors, filling them with natural materials and sowing with grass and plantings. All this is supposed to take about 10 years,” said the representative of the BSK.
He also added that about 1 billion rubles were preliminarily allocated for the reclamation of the «white seas». Earlier, as part of her working trip to Bashkiria, Svetlana Radionova, the head of Rosprirodnadzor (the Russian Federal Service for Supervision of Natural Resources), instructed to take all measures to eliminate environmental problems caused by the activities of the BSK.
“The Sterlitamak enterprise is actually a monopoly on the territory of Russia. At the same time, the process of production does not contain any technological innovations, we simply take resources from nature. If we continue working like this, then nothing good will remain for us or our children. A company that has been profitable for decades should not behave this way. There is a very big problem in the reclamation of sludge damps, and there are many other difficulties. And we will demand immediate action to resolve these issues,” Radionova said.
“We have adopted a program for the long-term development of BSK, and solving environment-related issues will the one of the top priorities there. We are now working with the federal government to form a new Board of Directors. We will work together,” said Andrey Nazarov, Prime Minister of the Government of the Republic of Bashkortostan.
Annually over 50 thousand tons of waste is generated as an outcome of the enterprise’s activities. They are placed in the sludge damps located in the floodplain of the River Belaya, which has a negative impact on water bodies.
In order to solve the above-mentioned problems, it’s necessary to modernize technological process, localize soil and water pollution, and implement new technologies for waste processing.