You're reading: Kalush an environmental disaster in waiting

Chemical waste from years of salt mining endangers western Ukraine’s water arteries that could potentially reach the Black Sea.

KALUSH, Ukraine — Ivan Debych stands at the snowy edge of a tailings dam outside of this town in Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast, observing what looks like a large frozen lake, but in reality is a lurking danger for millions of people in the region.

“If the dam breaks or overflows, its deposits will get into the river system, and contaminate the drinking water in the entire region,” said Debych, who heads Kalush’s department of emergency services. “The dam is our immediate concern.”

The problem, Debych explained, is that this particular tailing dam is filled nearly to capacity with industrial deposits from the nearby mining enterprise at the Kalush-Holynsky potassium salt and potassium ore field. The 48-acre dam, known as Number Two, can hold another 100,000 cubic meters of matter before it spills over into the fields below. The situation is particularly critical in a year like this one, when large amounts of melting snow can quickly fill the dam to overflowing.

“If the dam breaks, it will flood the factories and homes in the area,” Debych said, gesturing toward a field that is home to an oil refinery, a carpet factory and another plant producing window blinds. “It would take only seven, eight hours.”

The dam is just a part of the problem, though. Because of decades of mining and the region’s geography, pockets of ground occasionally cave in around Kalush. Many homes and elements of municipal infrastructure are facing collapse.

Like others in this city of 64,000 residents, Debych is hoping that a recent decree signed by outgoing President Victor Yushchenko and approved by parliament will help Kalush overcome the region’s environmental problems that have become increasingly prevalent since Kyiv shut down the local salt mining operation in 2001.

Those problems are many, local officials said.

“Have a look,” said Vasyl Petriv, the mayoral assistant in charge of building and land-related issues, handing over a technical 10-page report his team prepared for the president and government officials.

According to the report, along with the danger of flooding from the tailing dam, leaching from the nearby Dombrovsky quarry, which for decades was mined for potassium salt, also threatens to pollute nearby waterways. If efforts to stop the seepage are not successful, a local river, the Sivka, will carry deposits into the Dniester River, and ultimately the Black Sea. Millions of people, including residents of Moldova, will lose their drinking water.

“What I saw today here in Kalush, is staggering,” Yushchenko said after visiting the city on Feb. 2. Two weeks earlier, residents had voted overwhelmingly in favor of a local referendum initiated by city authorities to declare Kalush and the surrounding area an environmental disaster zone.

“It is sad that for tens of years the environmental potential was exploited and no one cared how to fight the dangerous environmental signals. Today no one can predict on which territory this danger will be spread,” Yushchenko said.

Shortly after his visit, the outgoing president issued a decree declaring Kalush and the surrounding villages of Kropyvnyk and Sivka-Kaluska in Ivano-Frankivsk oblast an environmental disaster zone for 90 days. With 392 votes in favor, parliament approved the decree on Feb. 12, paving the way for Kalush to receive Hr 560 million to begin fixing its environmental mess. The total cost to prevent an environmental catastrophe in the area is estimated at Hr 3.5 billion.

The decree orders the Cabinet of Ministers to take the necessary steps to prevent the pollution of drinking water, reinforce the Number Two tailings dam, and conserve the Dombrovsky quarry. In addition, the decree called on the Cabinet to urge residents to immediately evacuate areas prone to subsidence and to provide them with temporary, and then permanent, housing.

Debych said one of the reasons Kalush authorities wanted to declare the region an environmental disaster zone was to bring national attention to an issue they could no longer handle alone.

“We really needed to bring this question to the top,” he said.

Salt first started being excavated in Kalush when the region was a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Regular cooking salt was dug out of mines until 1867. Specialists then began to notice the composition of the salt had changed; it was bitterer and its color was darker. Tests conducted in Vienna showed the new substance was potassium salt, which was ideal for industrial use. For many years thereafter, the salt was excavated from underground mines. In 1967, the Soviets began exploitation of the Dombrovsky quarry, an open-air mine, which was part of the state-owned Oriana chemical enterprise.

Officials here agree that many of Kalush’s environmental issues began in earnest in 2001, after the government closed the 17,000 employee Oriana and broke it up into several enterprises. Russia’s Lukoil took over the enterprise’s oil refinery while other companies set up shop in existing buildings. The salt mine itself was closed and the nearby service structures began to deteriorate because of inactivity. The roof in one of the buildings caved in several years ago and has not been repaired.

Today, Oriana belongs to Ukraine’s State Property Fund and is plagued with debts.

Petriv said one way of staving off environmental disaster and getting the region economically viable is to begin mining salt again. Officials estimate the mine could produce potassium salt for another 100 years. During the Soviet period, the Kalush mine was the largest producer of potassium salt in Ukraine and one of the largest in the Soviet Union. Today, with no other mine producing potassium salt, Ukraine purchases the product from other countries.

The mine’s closure means that a skeleton crew maintains the trailing dam and the Dombrovsky quarry.

Oleh Oglezhuk has worked at the salt mine in various positions since 1989. He is one of handful of people who maintains the trailing dam.

“There aren’t many of us anymore,” he said. “I work once a week. We don’t even have people to properly check the dam.”

Oglezhuk agreed the salt mine should start working again – it is like a living organism that needs to breathe.

“Everything is connected,” he said.

Meanwhile, Petriv is trying to figure out how to relocate residents who live in areas where subsidence is an immediate problem. Ultimately, the city will have to move about 5,000 residents who reside in 610 buildings. “There are many unanswered questions,” he admitted. For one, city authorities don’t have a place where they can relocate people. “Perhaps we could send them to a hotel or dormitory for the time being,” he said.

The long-term plan is to build a new micro-region for 6,500 residents that would include a new school, stores and other amenities. The city hopes to use part of the Hr 344 million that has been allocated for relocation to build the micro-region.

Another issue is how to compensate people for the land they will lose when they move. While individuals may receive an apartment in exchange for their home, are they also entitled to be reimbursed for their land parcels?

“We don’t know,” Petriv said.

Zina, a 55-year-old Kalush resident who didn’t want to give her last name, said she’s concerned about fairness in the relocation process.

She remembers the day 20 years ago when the ground rumbled and her neighbors’ homes were swallowed by the earth.

“It was 7 a.m.” she said, snow shovel in hand as she stood outside her neatly-maintained home. “The cracks that appeared were so deep and wide that two people could comfortably stand inside them side-by-side.”

Some of the homes were destroyed and residents had to move out of them and into apartments provided by the state. Other residents, whose homes were partially destroyed, were also given apartments in Kalush. Their houses were deemed uninhabitable and written off the state’s balance sheets.

Shortly thereafter, however, many residents moved right back into them, Zina said.

“I don’t know how they can live in those homes,” she said. “But they sure didn’t mind getting those apartments. What’s the guarantee this time that won’t happen again?”

Natalia A. Feduschak is the Kyiv Post’s correspondent in western Ukraine. She can be reached at [email protected].