Barren forests, dirty rivers, unbreathable air: Inside an Arctic city's vast pollution problem
It was 2 a.m. and the sun was shining, as it does day and night in mid-July in Norilsk, a Siberian city 200 miles north of the Arctic Circle.
Igor Klyushin went to the bank of the river where he used to fish with his father for grayling, a dorsal-finned beauty known for its graceful leaps above the surface. “A very merry fish,” Klyushin recalled. “It enjoys cold and clean, clean water.”
He doubted grayling would be there that night. In any event, authorities had long warned that it was unsafe to fish for them in the Daldykan River.
And besides, he wasn’t there to fish. He began to record images of the clay-colored muck flowing downriver from one of the largest metal mining and smelting complexes in the world. The discolored water represented “the latest environmental crime of Norilsk Nickel,” Klyushin said in the video he posted on “Norilchane” — or “Citizens of Norilsk” — the YouTube channel he helps moderate.The channel and its Facebook group, with about 8,300 members, have become gathering places for distressed residents of Norilsk, the northernmost city in the world. The city of 176,000 has long been recognized by environmentalists — and even by the Russian government — as one of the most polluted places on Earth, because of one business: Norilsk Nickel, the world’s biggest producer of palladium and high-grade nickel and a top producer of platinum, cobalt and copper.
Built as a resource colony by prisoners in the Soviet Gulag, Norilsk outlasted communism, embraced capitalism, and it now aims to ramp up production to sell the metals needed for electric vehicle batteries and the clean energy economy. Norilsk Nickel is the world’s leading producer of the high-purity Class 1 nickel that electric vehicle industry leaders like Tesla CEO Elon Musk are seeking. The company’s ambitions coincide with those of Russian President Vladimir Putin for greater development in the Far North, which he maintains can be accomplished sustainably.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/norilsk-russian-arctic-became-one-polluted-places-earth-rcna6481
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I knew from my father, way back in the 70s, that Eastern Europe and Russia were terrible polluters. Seems it has only gotten worse. This article is nightmarish.
