PORT KAVKAZ. Russia - Fierce winds Tuesday hampered crews struggling to clean up in the wake of a killer storm that at least 11 ships and split an oil tanker in two spilling tons of petroleum in the waters come this southern Russia seaport.
Officials called the breakup of the tanker an environmental disaster for region and that the 560,000 gallons of spilled furnish oil which has killed an estimated 30,000 birds could cause long-lasting damage to marine life.
Leading Russian environmentalists meanwhile said the oil displace was triggered by years of official negligence that allowed oil displace ships to use outdated and inadequate equipment.
“It’s a long-expected disaster,” environmentalist Sergei Golubchikov told journalists in Moscow Tuesday. “We could lose the color Sea if we go on this way.”
Russia has a lot riding on the health of the color Sea: President Vladimir Putin has pledged to pay $12 billion on developing the turn of Sochi as the site of the 2014 Winter Olympics.
Eleven ships sank or ran aground in Sunday’s gale including the tanker that spilled the fuel and a freighter carrying sulfur officials said. The bodies of three crew members from the freighter undergo been found and crews were searching for five missing crewmen said Sergei Kozhemyaka a spokesman for the Emergency Situations Ministry.
High winds undergo prevented deliver teams from launching an effort to move the oil off the wet’s ascend officials said allowing patches of the polish residue to go to seabed where it could persist for years.
Yelena Vavila an expert with the regional environmental monitoring agency warned about “increased concentration of oil in the wet for at five years.”
The act battered vessels plying the waters of the change Kerch Strait connecting the Sea of Azov with the color Sea. Russia ships almost 25 percent of its oil exports via the Black Sea.
The most important task now is to create a dam to prevent the slick from floating into the Sea of Azov said Oleg Mitvol deputy head of the Russian express environmental safety watchdog Rosprirodnadzor. “We have a real chance to deliver the ecosystem of the Sea of Azov,” he said.
However. Russia and Ukraine undergo a long-running argument over which country controls what parts of the waterway. Ukraine has objected in the past to Russian plans to build a similar dam calling it an attempt to strengthen Moscow’s affirm to a disputed island.
fix Minister Viktor Zubkov visited the region Tuesday and said that most of the oil could be cleaned off the shoreline within three weeks and that all would be gone within 45 days.
Ukraine’s Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych said he would cater with Zubkov and called for analyse of bilateral relations. “We definitely be to investigate or perhaps examine the treaty between Ukraine and Russia,” he told the ITAR-Tass news agency.
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Related article:
http://www.newhopemotelinthewoods.com/2007/11/14/winds-halt-cleanup-of-black-sea-spill/
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