In 2024, Russia’s environmental map will turn green. The result of the federal project «Clean Country» under the national project «Ecology» will be the complete elimination of millions of tonnes of toxic waste accumulated over decades, including at such hazardous facilities posing a real environmental threat as the «Krasny Bor» toxic waste landfill, «Baikal Pulp and Paper Mill» and the «Usolyekhimprom» chemical plant.
The «Krasny Bor» landfill has existed in the Leningrad Region since 1969. Its 67.4-hectare site contains 1.7 million tonnes of industrial toxic waste classified as hazard classes I–IV. The landfill has 70 waste storage cells in total: 65 were closed before 1980, while 5 operated until 2014. This year, the Federal Environmental Operator conducted surveys, technically inspected the buildings and structures on the landfill site, and prepared a remediation project for «Krasny Bor».
A pilot industrial unit was installed to neutralise the contents of the landfill’s open cells. It can process the contents of the cells into up to 95% clean water and 5% technogenic soil. The quality of the treated water was confirmed by Rosprirodnadzor; test results showed that the treated water complied with the standards for water intended for fisheries.
The priority steps for eliminating the waste of the closed Baikal Pulp and Paper Mill (BPPM) included the construction this year of local treatment facilities for supernatant water in the waste storage cells of the «Solzansky» and «Babhinsky» landfills. This will eliminate the risk of overflow and failure of the dams of the hydraulic structures, as well as sudden pollution of Lake Baikal. By the end of the season, 70,000 cubic metres of supernatant water are planned to be treated. The cell contents are treated in several stages, from mechanical treatment to ultraviolet treatment, resulting in clean distilled water.
The «Usolyekhimprom» plant was built in 1936 and ceased operations in 2010. Its 610-hectare site contains more than 200 abandoned industrial facilities, including a mercury electrolysis workshop, tanks containing chemical waste, and underground wells into which waste was injected. The problem at «Usolyekhimprom» became acute in 2018, when a state of emergency was introduced at the site. The maximum permissible concentration of mercury was exceeded by more than 200 times, and the mercury electrolysis workshop was the most hazardous location at the chemical plant.
See the special report by the Vesti Russia 24 television channel on how the «Clean Country» project is being implemented under the national project «Ecology» at high-risk facilities.