It will take 2-3 years to restore the Seim and Desna. 5,600 tons of polluted water from a sugar factory in the Kursk region of Russia entered the Seim River. It was carried away to the Desna.
This mass destroyed all the dissolved oxygen in the water within a few hours, which led, among other things, to a sea of fish.
The damage to the environment in the Chernihiv and Sumy regions due to pollution of the Seim and Desna rivers exceeds 405 million UAH.
This was announced at a conference at Ukrinform on September 12 by the Director of the Ukrainian Hydrometeorological Institute of Ukraine Volodymyr Osadchy and the Director of the Institute of Hydrobiology of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine Sergey Afanasyev.
The volume of contaminated water entering the Seimas was assessed using satellite images.
Speaking about the consequences of pollution of the Seim and Desna, Afanasyev recalled the ecological disaster on the Dniester in 1983, when all living things died along 500 kilometers of the river due to the break of the Stebnitsky tailing dump earth dam. He added that recovery on unregulated rivers can take several years.
At the same time, according to Deputy Minister of Environmental Protection and Natural Resources of Ukraine Elena Kramarenko, the quality of water in the Seim is improving, the content of dissolved oxygen has reached the norm – 4 milligrams per cubic decimeter, no fish deaths are recorded. And in the Desna, pollution has slowed down, is recorded pointwise and is of a heterogeneous nature. According to her, 15 boats and more than 140 specialists have now been brought in to collect dead fish in the Chernihiv region.
As reported by the acting head of the State Environmental Inspectorate Igor Zubovich, local authorities and concerned citizens have already collected 31 tons of dead fish – 12 tons 150 kilograms in the Sumy region and 19 tons in the Chernihiv region. Specialists continue to conduct enhanced monitoring of the water condition and have already collected 195 samples in the Chernihiv, Sumy and Kyiv regions. According to the results of measurements of priority pollutants in the Seim and Desna rivers, no excess of pesticides, polyaromatic hydrocarbons, volatile organic compounds, or heavy metals was detected.
Currently, the pollution has already passed 242 km along the Desna. According to updated forecast data from the Ukrainian Hydrometeorological Center, the polluted water may reach the Kyiv region approximately on September 14-16. Tap water in the capital meets all standards, said the chief sanitary doctor of Kyiv, head of the Kyiv City Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Serhiy Chumak.
Pollution of the Desna has been reported since the end of August. Fish are dying en masse in the river, and the water has turned black. Pollution began with the Seim River, which is a left tributary of the Desna and flows, in particular, through the Kursk region of the Russian Federation, where military actions continue.
Source: Racurs
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