Russian spill leaves residue of fear, anger
TUZLA SPIT, Russia - Crunching through oil-crusted seashells scattered on fouled beaches among dead and dying birds, exhausted volunteers fumed Wednesday about the uneven distribution of Russia’s petroleum wealth.
As far as the eye could see, the pale sands of this narrow finger poking into the Black Sea were coated with a film of black and piles of oil-soaked seaweed. A strong smell of diesel hung in the air. Three days after a mighty storm cracked a decrepit tanker in two and dumped 2,000 tons of oil into the Strait of Kerch, a small army of workers toiled to clear the mess.
Dead dolphins had begun to wash ashore, adding to the thousands of birds and untold numbers of fish already known to have been poisoned. Some of the birds tried to fly away, but their wings wouldn’t carry them. They tried to shake off the slimy black coat but couldn’t.
So they sat quiet as black silhouettes against the rocks, trying to get warm against the autumn wind and waiting to die. Seagulls circled overhead, waiting to feast on their corpses.
“Somebody is making millions of dollars by selling oil and sending those ancient tankers to our shore, ready to sink at any minute,” said Alexander Gayduk, a middle-age farmworker from nearby Taman. “But they are not here to help with this mess, are they? Where are the trucks? Where is the heavy machinery we need?”
With oil prices at record highs, Russia is earning vast sums through petroleum exports. The country’s oil income not only is fueling the increasingly assertive foreign policy of President Vladimir Putin’s government, but it is creating a new class of wealthy businessmen - many with ties to the Kremlin.
Up to one-third of those booming exports move through the Black Sea.
“It’s the disaster we’ve been dreading for many years,” said Laurence Mee, an oceanographer who coordinates the United Nations’ Black Sea Environmental Program. “It’s not a spill on a vast scale, like some of the massive oil spills, but the Black Sea is a totally enclosed basin. There’s no place for the oil to go, except on shore somewhere.”
Mee predicted that the spill would have a lingering effect on wildlife and on tourism at Black Sea beaches and nature preserves in Russia and Ukraine.
A regional governor said a day after the disaster that more than 30,000 birds had died. But Viktor Zubakin, president of the Russian Bird Conservation Union, told journalists Wednesday that “we’re talking about the death of thousands, not tens of thousands of birds.”
Despite reducing the bird death toll, Zubakin warned that “this disaster is only the first call” of danger, and that if a similar-magnitude oil spill were to hit sensitive bird habitats in Russia’s north, “the consequences will be much worse.”
Other environmentalists called on Russian authorities to toughen punishment for environmental damage and impose strict control on oil tankers and other vessels that transport oil.
Here on the Tuzla Spit, firemen, farm workers and soldiers spread out over the sands Wednesday. A cluster of soldiers in heavy rubber chemical suits moved slowly among the black-coated boulders, armed with spades and pitchforks. Sweat ran down their faces.
Nearby, fisherman Alexander Vnukov stood in his motorboat, fuming. Facing the collapse of his livelihood, he had hoped to salvage his nets. But he found them ruined, clogged with oil.
“We caught a lot of fish, but we had to throw it all away. The fish smelled like oil,” he said. “Who would want to buy it? Even I wouldn’t eat it.”
The closest town is Taman, onetime home to ancient Greeks and considered one of Russia’s oldest settlements. Bleak rows of dusty and dilapidated houses give no hint of the town’s rich history. Jobs are scarce, so most residents eke a livelihood from the thousands of vacationers and fishermen who flock to the isolated shores. Now the townspeople fear for their future.
Residents lamented the loss of tourists and swapped theories on whom to blame for the breakup of the Volganeft-139 tanker, built in Bulgaria in 1978. The vessel, which belonged to the Moscow-based oil-shipping company Volgotanker, broke apart in a stretch of water between Russia and Ukraine known for rough seas and high winds.
The cleanup was inching slowly forward. About 1,000 volunteers were working Wednesday, and 1,000 students were expected to join the effort today.
Information from The Associated Press is included in this report.