Head of Tatarstan Ministry of Ecology: Two-month cleaning and environmental campaign starts in Tatarstan on April 1
On March 26, speaking at the Government House of the republic at a regional meeting, Tatarstan Minister of Ecology and Natural Resources Aleksandr Shadrikov said that a two-month cleaning and environmental campaign starts in Tatarstan on April 1 and all supervisory authorities have carried out appropriate organizational preparations for the upcoming events.
The Minister said that two-month campaign is aimed at the sanitary cleaning of the territories of settlements, the identification and elimination of piles, landfills accumulated during the winter period and bringing the territories to the proper ecological and sanitary-epidemiological condition after melting the snow cover.
The traditional inspection of the lanes of diversion of the Kazan region of Gorky and Kuibyshev Railways and adjacent territory with the participation of Russian Railways Company are planned. The Road Safety State Institution also takes an active part. Aviation is also involved in conducting surveys of territories. Special attention will be paid to the state of water protection zones, including the facts of storage of animal waste in protected zones.
During the last year's two-month cleaning and environmental campaign, over 5,000 violations were revealed and suppressed in the republic, more than 3,000 decisions were issued on imposing fines amounting to more than 13 million roubles. About 4,000 places of unauthorized waste disposal were identified, and by the end of the campaign, 96 per cent of them were eliminated. In total, more than 780,000 people took part in the campaign last year. About 420,000 cubic meters of waste were taken to the solid waste landfills and more than 700,000 thousand trees and shrubs were planted.
The minister also said that the Tatarstan project to raise sunken ships was previously supported at the federal level. “In order to justify the need for these works, diving surveys were carried out, and the negative impact of these objects was revealed. Currently, under the “Rehabilitation of the Volga" project work on raising the ships is planned. They will be carried out by divisions of Rosmorrechflot,” he said. Shadrikov added that this project is a pilot one and is being implemented with the support of the Russian Ministry of Natural Resources.
He said that sunken vessels are a problem for navigation, especially when reservoirs are shallowing and water is leaving. Vessels also pollute water bodies with residues of chemically active substances, petroleum products contained in cargo tanks and engine rooms. Ecologists mark pollution of the aquatic environment with compounds of iron and heavy metals. As a result, the characteristics of water flows change.
Ministry of Ecology of Tatarstan proposed to raise the level of the Nizhnekamsk reservoir to 64 meters in order to ensure the creation of additional control tanks for the Volga-Kama cascade
On the basis of existing analysts, ecologists have reached the federal level with a grounded initiative of complex solution of problems of regulation of operation of reservoirs of the Volga-Kama Cascade, and not only Kuibyshev Reservoir. They propose to intensify the development of new rules for the use of water resources of Kuibyshev, Saratov and Volgograd reservoirs.