In Zaporizhzhia, an excavator is cleaning the Mokra Moskovka River from oil pollution, but it has not been possible to completely stop the pollutant from moving downstream.
This is reported by the city portal ZaBor, as well as by local activists on social media.
On May 13, the telegram channel showed how the cleanup was going.
According to residents, it is ineffective. In addition, residents of the Kalantyrivka district complained about traces of oil on the roadway and streets. They assume that the pollutant spilled during transportation.
On May 14, a blogger who was the first to post a video of the environmental disaster showed that the installed booms do not help to completely stop the further movement of the oil slick. He claims that some of the oil products have moved 50 meters downstream.
What the environmental inspection found out
On May 15, the State Ecological Inspectorate of the Southern District said that it had taken water samples at control points on the Mokra Moskovka and Dnipro rivers and promised to monitor the situation with water pollution in the future.
The concentrations of oil products in the samples are as follows:
- Mokra Moskovka, near the central bus station in Zaporizhzhia – 0.169 mg/dm³;
- Mokra Moskovka River, at the confluence with the Dnipro River – 0.157 mg/dm³;
- Dnipro River, at a distance of 0.5 km above the confluence of the Mokra Moskovka River – 0.038 mg/dm³;
- Dnipro River, at a distance of 3.0 km below the confluence of the Mokra Moskovka River – 0.045 mg/dm³.
The experts stated that the content of oil products in all the samples did not exceed the maximum permissible concentration of 0.3 mg/dm³.
The environmental inspectors did not find any visual signs of oil contamination of the water surface at the specified control points. ZaBor noted that they did not take any samples at the site of the pollution or even 100 meters away from it (or did not publish their results).
Where did the pollution come from?
There is currently no official information on the source of the oil in Mokra Moskovka. Local residents said that after Russian shelling, a fuel oil tank was damaged at one of the town's enterprises. It is possible that oil products spilled out and flowed into the river with rainwater.
As EcoPolitic previously reported, on the evening of May 11, social media reported that the surface of the water of the Mokra Moskovka River in Zaporizhzhia was covered with a dense film of a thick, dark substance.
