The contaminated industrial site in Usolye-Sibirskoye urgently needs to be isolated and secured by the Russian Guard. This was announced by Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday, July 30.
To solve the city’s problems, it is necessary to mobilize all the resources of the authorities, including the Ministry of Defense, he said. In addition, the President instructed the Ministry of Finance to allocate money to eliminate the consequences of environmental problems in the city.
The head of state instructed to create an interdepartmental working group on the situation in Usolye-Sibirskoye and develop an action plan.
A report on the first stage of problem solving is due in three months, the president said.
The city of Usolye-Sibirskoye, published in July 2019 by Roshydromet on the state of the environment in Russia, was in the list of 20 settlements with the dirtiest air in the country.
In the same month, the head of Rosprirodnadzor, Svetlana Radionova, in an interview with Izvestia, said that her department was seeking the creation of a state program for reclamation of the territory of the Usoliekhimprom enterprise, since there is a huge amount of mercury-containing residues, containers with chemically hazardous substances are stored in the buildings of the plant. She stated that if nothing is done, then there is a chance to get “ecological Chernobyl”.