Cleanup personnel has started to remove waste materials from the 7670 км2 Arctic island of Wrangel. If successful, the equipment applied in the operation will be applied also in the upcoming cleanup at Franz Josef Land, the Ministry informs in a press release.
The operation at the Wrangel Island is a pilot project, started after the Russian Government in 2010 allocated a significant sum for the operations.
Read also: Putin: Arctic environment comes first
In the conference The Arctic – Territory of Dialogue, Putin admitted that the Soviet Union had tended to have a “consumer- attitude” towards the Arctic, and that the development of towns and industrial complexes in the Arctic had not always been economically, nor environmentally, well founded. Earlier the same year, Putin visited the Franz Josef Land.
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A part of the clean-up program is also the installation of new communications equipment and the acquisition of new transport objects both for sea and land traffic. Also new facilities for tourist will be erected, the Ministry of Natural Resources says.
The Wrangel Island is located in the eastern part of the Russian Arctic north of the Chukchi peninsula. The island had a polar station and a small settlement in the period from 1926 to 2003. Franz Josef Land on the other hand is located in the westernmost part of the Russian Arctic and hosted a military base.
About 250 thousand barrels of oil products, as well as the about one million empty barrels, and old military equipment like cars, aircrafts, radar installations and more are left rusting in the archipelago, posing a serious environmental threat to the local Arctic environment.
According leader of the Franz Josef Land national park Gennady Danilov all the polluting equipment and substances can be removed in the course of the next 10-15 years.
As BarentsObserver previousy reported the cleaning-up at Franz Josef’s Land has already started.
Read also: Enviro-cleanup at Franz Josefs Land started
