[News] How Norilsk, in the Russian Arctic, became one of the most polluted places on Earth

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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. 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.

 

 

But Norilsk Nickel has undermined its own vision for the future by spoiling a priceless environment, with implications for the entire planet. The company’s pollution has carved a barren landscape of dead and dying trees out of the taiga, or boreal forest, one of the world’s largest carbon sinks. Its wastewater has turned glacial rivers red. Its smokestacks belch out the worst sulfur dioxide pollution in the world. And last year, a corroded tank burst and released 6.5 million gallons of diesel fuel into waters that flow to the Kara Sea. It was the largest oil spill in Arctic history. Although Norilsk Nickel maintains that no diesel fuel made it to the Arctic Ocean, the Russian government’s fisheries science agency told Inside Climate News that its testing showed that the contamination had reached that far.

In September, Norilsk Nickel agreed to negotiate the settlement of an $ 800 million lawsuit that the federal fisheries agency, known as Rosrybolovstvo, filed against the company this summer over the damage to the region’s aquatic resources.

Norilsk is an example of the kind of systematic and long-term devastation that has animated a global movement to make destruction of nature an international crime. The campaign aims to treat “ecocide” in the same way as genocide or crimes against humanity, offenses prosecutable by the Hague-based International Criminal Court. The ecocide campaign has drawn attention to the failure of national laws to halt severe and widespread or long-term damage that has international consequences.

Norilsk is grappling with such damage, both as part of a region that is especially vulnerable to climate change and as a city reliant on an industry that has poisoned its land and water.

Norilsk Nickel maintains that it can rehabilitate its environment. It paid a $ 2 billion fine for last year’s diesel spill, the largest environmental penalty in the country’s history, and it has pledged to spend more than $ 5 billion on both pollution control and economic and social revitalization throughout its territory of Krasnoyarsk Krai.

“We do acknowledge that there are legacy issues relating to our business,” a company spokesman said in written responses to questions from Inside Climate News, referring to the problems left over from the Soviet era. "We are implementing far-reaching measures to address them."

Local government officials are enthusiastic about Norilsk Nickel’s program. The city and the territory plan to build a hospital, renovate housing and even create an Arctic Museum of Modern Art. Krasnoyarsk Krai Gov. Alexander Uss has proposed making Norilsk the official capital of the Russian Arctic.

But residents like Klyushin are skeptical, given the pollution they’ve seen even after the company paid its fine.

“When I came that night to see the Daldykan, my heart really sank, and it was broken,” Klyushin said, speaking by phone through an interpreter two weeks after he took video of the discolored water in July. "The river was red with pulp, and the chemical smell is still in my lungs."

 

 

LINK: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/norilsk-russian-arctic-became-one-polluted-places-earth-rcna6481