Former Soviet States Choking On Toxic Garbage, Munitions, Radioactive Waste - AFP

[hatrack]

Toxic waste, water pollution and the legacy of Chernobyl have plunged Ukraine and neighbouring Moldova and Belarus into an environmental crisis, according to the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). In a report released in Prague this week, the OSCE said contaminated military sites were also a festering problem.

"Ukraine has approximately 2.5 millions tonnes of Soviet-era ammunition that requires disposal, including four burial grounds for radioactive waste", said the report. The break-up of the Soviet Union had solved some environmental problems, but exacerbated others because of lax regulation and increased exploitation of natural resources, it said. The application of stricter EU environmental standards in Slovakia and Hungary, Ukraine's neighbours, has resulted in attempts to export environmental problems across their eastern borders.

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Up to 10 percent of Ukrainian waste disposal sites belonging to the military require major repairs, the report said, pointing to a series of accidental explosions between 2004 and 2006 at the Novobohdanivka arsenal in the south of the country. In Belarus, "the most serious environmental problem concerns the liquidation of armaments and munitions inherited from the Soviet Union, including toxic and radioactive material", the OSCE said. During the Soviet era, military sites covered 300,000 hectares (741,000 acres), mostly forests. These had now been abandonded, leaving local authorities to clean up oil products in the soil and deal with high levels of electromagnetic radiation.

Moldova's military legacy included around 20,000 tonnes of arms and munitions stocked at the Cobasna station in Transnistria which are also hard to get rid of. "The simultaneous explosion of such quantities of ammunition may trigger an environmental and humanitarian disaster," the report warned.

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http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Ukraine_Belarus_Moldova_Choking_On_Toxic_Waste_999.html

[razzleberry]

1. perhaps some type of offset program could be ...

helpful towards Ukraine becoming toxic neutral