Killing the Volga

It would be difficult to find a more appropriate venue for discussing the fate of great rivers than Nizhniy Novgorod, the very center of which is at the confluence of the Oka and the Volga – at the foot of a high, steep hill. This epic scenery is certainly thought-provoking, but the thoughts can hardly be called pleasing. You will perforce recall Oka banks sliding off into the river together with residential settlements (which happened because sand had bee scooped out with gay abandon), the “fox tails” of industrial waste drifting over the water, the flows of filth gushing out of countless pipes and straight into the Oka, and even feces floating in the Volga near Nizhniy.

Environmental pollution in the Volga basin, where approximately half the country’s population lives, is three to five times higher than the Russian average while the strain on water resources exceeds average indicators up to eight times.

It is appropriate to remember that some years ago the government approved a federal program, Volga revival. Reviving the great river is a formidable challenge. A 70-percent production decline in industry failed to make the water clean, and this is hardly surprising: Say, in the Astrakhan region, 50 percent of sewage disposal systems do not have purification facilities while in Saratov region it'’ a whopping 80 percent.

Furthermore, the city of Dzerzhinsk, on the Oka, not far from where it flows into the Volga, is the center of military chemical production that has contaminated everything for miles and miles around. And although toxic agents have now given way to “civilian chemistry, this has done little to alleviate the situation. According to the city sanitary and epidemiological supervision center, the probe conducted in Oka showed that the water had 15 times the maximum permissible concentration of manganese, 20 times the maximum of oil products and 5 times of phenols. And that is river water used as potable water. The Volga basin features a high concentration of military chemical facilities. It is home to three-fourths of the country’s chemical weapon stocks. Given that approximately half of Russia’s entire population lives in or around the Volga basin while clean water here is a rarity, it becomes clear that the Volga Revival program is our last hope.

Some of the best brains worked on it, providing for well thought-through measures: environmentally-friendly development of industry and agriculture as well as urban development; restoration of specially protected natural areas; protection of fish stocks; environmental monitoring; law-based regulation, and scientific support. The program produced a good impression not only on the Russian public. It was thoroughly thought out, up to modern standards, and ensured sustainable development. The program is good but there is no money to pay for it.

Luckily, the industrialized world is ready to help us: The Volga-Caspian Sea international project was approved by the UNESCO Council. This large-scale project is designed to improve the environmental situation, preserve endemic species, and ensure sustainable development of the region. But programs alone are not enough to save the Volga and Caspian. The river needs a good manager – one, not a great number, as is the case today, when every department is in charge of its own section. This manager could be called, say, the Great Volga Russian joint-stock company or a state-run enterprise – anything as long as it takes good care of our main river.

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