Ukraine’s Other Crisis

By Wolodymyr Derzko

While the political standoff between the democratic forces and the Party of Regions in the Verkhovna Rada (Parliament) has taken most of the news headlines in Ukraine and around the world, there is another crisis brewing in Ukraine which has received much less media attention, but is none the less equally important.

Most of the world equates Ukraine and Chornobyl as synonymous -the world’s worst nuclear disaster.  Fewer people are aware of the fact that Ukraine has a growing environmental toxic waste crisis –both from a legacy of the former Soviet Union and a recent dumping ground for black market waste peddlers from Europe who are facing tougher EU environmental regulations.  Lax local environmental law enforcement and corrupt government officials, who get payoffs from industry, only compounds the problem.

A story in 2003 by the BBC, entitled Chemical plants turn Ukraine’s tourist paradise into desert landscape, reports on a “dead plain”, a 42 square km wide acid reservoir, now hardened into a dusty cake.  Hundreds of tonnes of ferrous metals and a million tonnes of phosphor-gypsum have been dumped here to yield the following vivid description: “Gusts of wind are depositing this toxic dust all over the peninsula.  Acid rains have ceased to be a rarity.  Crimea’s ecologists, who have been conducting large-scale monitoring, say the entire northern part of Crimea is at risk from chemical pollution.  Contaminated water is getting into the water table and the sea.  Vegetables and fruit, harvested from soil contaminated with heavy metals, are dangerous to one’s health and sold at markets throughout Crimea.  Scientists say the waste in the acid reservoir needs to be urgently neutralized and disposed off.  In due course, the local chemical industry needs to undergo complete conversion.”  While some have called stories like this – which appeared on NTV Mir in Moscow - an exaggeration and fear mongering by Russian spin doctors and attempts to disrupt the Ukrainian tourism industry, there is more than a grain of truth associated with these accusations. These conditions do exist.

We see similar problems around other parts of Ukraine which has 8 dump sites containing toxic and corrosive rocket fuel. Called melange -- concentrated nitric acid, it is used as an oxidant for medium and short-range missile fuel. Politicians are aware of the problem and claim the situation is under control, despite recent spills and a toxic cloud over the village of Yulyivka, Zaporizhya Region. Just before the 2005 elections, NATO, OSCE and German experts visited Radekhiv –a rocket fuel dump site that contains 3,200 tonnes of waste, to work out a blueprint for missile fuel recycling. The cleanup cost for all of Ukraine is estimated at $20 million, which politicians have yet to commit.

Local garbage production and disposal adds to the problem. Ukrainian towns and cities produce over 35 million cubic m of domestic refuse, only half of which is processed.  The rest is removed to dumps or burnt producing greenhouse gases.

ICTV television reported on January 31, 2007 that Ukraine is sinking in toxic waste, tonnes of which are smuggled to its border regions under falsified documents.  Not trusting state officials, residents of Transcarpathian and Lviv regions where many of these dumps are located, invited the UN special rapporteur on toxic wastes, Okechukwu Ibeanu, to investigate. He concluded that Ukraine needs to be rescued.  Over the past six years, 1,500 tonnes of toxic premix [a mixture of wastes] and about 25,000 tonnes of tar (waste from oil refining) were brought illegally to Lviv and Transcarpathian regions from neighbouring Hungary alone and this is threatening the nearby Dniester River. Areas at risk include: Lviv, Uzhorod, Novyy Rozdil, Berehove and the villages of Velyka Bakta, Muzhiyevo and Shom,

Ukrainian politicians are fence-sitting and buying time, hoping that the problem will go away, or at least won’t surface (pun intended) during their term in office. Most politicians worldwide are a reactive bunch by nature, but it is rare to find someone who consistently takes a forward-looking, proactive approach to the environment. Let us hope that it won’t take a Chornobyl like disaster, on the scale of a spill of rocket fuel oxidizer into a regional water table or river system, such as the Dniester River, to wake up Ukrainian politicians into action.

It is ironic that Ukraine has the skills and expertise to clean up its own mess and provide services to Russia and Eastern Europe who are wrestling with similar concerns. Ukrainian scientists are world leaders in biotechnology, nanotechnology and bioremediation (using genetically modified bacteria to clean up toxic spills).  However, we find academics constantly complaining that they cannot find clients in industry and government for their services. Rocket fuel has been successfully recycled using foreign NATO funding in Georgia and Moldova.  Interestingly, a Ukrainian firm was hired as a subcontractor in the Moldova project. Ukrainian politicians, academics and industry need to behold the emerging opportunity window and take action.

As Abraham Lincoln said: “You can’t escape your responsibility for tomorrow by evading it today”.

 Wolodymyr Derzko is in charge of a new certificate program in Entrepreneurship and Innovation at the School of Continuing Studies, University of Toronto which starts this fall.