Novouralsk: how a closed atomic city has turned into a megaback

Novouralsk is one of the 40 closed cities of Russia. The largest uranium enrichment plant in the world, the Rosatom Ural Electrochemical Plant, operates here.

The city where 83,000 people live is surrounded by a high concrete fence with barbed wire. In the last six years, more than 4,000 people have left the country. You can go to town only by checkpoints points. Foreigners are allowed only after verification of the Rosatom and FSB security services.

Near the entrance to the city is a "Gourmet" cafe on some tables. The locals gather here with those who have not been allowed to enter the city. Among them – and the correspondent of the Russian service bbc (The municipal administration has found no reason to register correspondents bbc in Novouralsk).

On a weekday, two coffee visitors quietly watch a series on the Russian police. On the left of the café is the local market, where they sell food, felt boots, brooms and cheap consumer goods. Half of the stands and pavilions are empty, almost no buyers.

Behind the market there is a train station with a café for those who can not be in town and a beer bar. Every day, hundreds of residents of Novouralsk travel by bus and train to Yekaterinburg to get to work. The trip takes about an hour and a half.

There are also three landfill sites in the city: a household landfill, a near-surface radioactive waste storage facility and a landfill site for which the chemical industry produces waste from the landfill. Sverdlovsk region and other regions for several years.

Three years ago, the city began to fight against the dumping of chemical waste.

And the story would not have gone beyond the high concrete fence, without a child and a 70-year-old retiree.

Russian service bbc tells how everything was.

Serezha, 14 years old (his real name is not revealed) was born in Novouralsk. His mother, Natalya (the name was changed at her request for security reasons) works at the local library.

In the city a bit of entertainment Serezha has always been riding bikes – in good and bad weather. He often had wet clothes and shoes, which they simply dried at home, told bbc Natalia

But, as it turned out later, the highway is at an unacceptable distance from the "deadly dump", as Natalia calls it. We are talking about the chemical waste dump, which is managed by the company "utilis". According to the mother of the child, all this led to the fact that Serozha was seriously ill.

Officially, it is possible to import third- and fourth-clbad hazardous waste into the USE LLC landfill, in operation since 1992. But local residents believe that since 2012, waste from a first and fourth year A second higher hazard clbades were imported into the landfill.

Local activists often badociate with UMMC and its managing director, Andrei Kozitsyn. According to SPARK, there is no clear link between companies.

Us director is Andrei Ovchinnikov, who is not affiliated with other companies, and Kirov's Alexey Skopin turned out to be the company's beneficiary. At the same time, the co-owners of the company change regularly and since 2002, the company has changed three directors.

According to SPARK, UTI is a fairly profitable business: in 2017, its net profit rose to nearly 73 million rubles and its turnover to more than 169 million rubles.

He is the only resident of the city to have received an official diagnosis of chronic intoxication of the body and heavy metals have been found in his blood, she said. This story has been confirmed by many of their friends.

The symptoms of this disease are: dermatitis, hair loss, nail lamination, liver problems, gastrointestinal tract and nervous system.

In the spring, the boy's health deteriorated. And Natalia started showing it to the doctors. For a price, she did some tests to confirm the diagnosis. In May, it was confirmed.

The history of the disease has spread rapidly in the city.

Someone & # 39; a sympathized with them. Someone & # 39; a just do not believe. One of the interlocutors bbc He said that Serezha's mother had "exaggerated the problem like all mothers". "He does not look too sick," he said bbc one of the activists.

And during the summer of this year, a material appeared on the portal site of the city, where it would have been alleged that Serezha would have "slept on a smoking habit" many years ago, and that it was not safe to smoke. he was aggressive and uncontrollable. They wrote about her mother that she would have "started to supervise" the subject of the fight against the landfill in the hope of receiving a grant to create a waste treatment plant.

"Documents [с диагнозом] Representatives of the dump photographed, and the next day a wave of dirty items struck us, as well as my son, where I, librarian, took power in town and where my son is an experienced trafficker, "said Natalia BBC.

According to her, she did not participate in the fight against the discharge of Us. "Black people in public relations have already used both epithets and nicknames," she complains. With correspondent bbc she refused to meet in person, answered questions via social networks.

In town, indeed, many have health problems. According to the Ministry of Health, the main cause of death in Novouralsk – cardiovascular diseases. Oncology is in second place: in 2017, 18.3% of deaths were badociated with this cause (15.8% of all of Russia). And on the third – wounds and poisonings.

The official report of the Ministry of Health, for example, indicates that 17 people were intoxicated by alcohol in the city last year. And only one managed to save.

In children, the first place is occupied by respiratory diseases.

It is extremely difficult to trace the connection between the user and the health of its inhabitants, said Yury Doronin, a journalist with local newspaper Neiva: "We have many steel mills around. And more inside the city: concrete too, cars too.

But the story of Seryozha led to an exacerbation of the conflict between public figures and the company Us. "The child suffered and we were more hooked," said one of the authors of the letter, Alexander Mizyulin. He is a social activist who participates in the organization "Anti-dealer", which fights against the spread of drugs.

In May, a group of activists decided to write a letter to President Vladimir Putin.

It was decided to sign it on behalf of a local pensioner, Gennady Leguntsov, who was joined by local activists to decide how to deal with the landfill.

Leguntsov had already discovered cancer. He, unlike the others, had nothing to lose, explains one of the interlocutors bbc on the condition of anonymity, why the letter was from him. Contact him bbc failed

The same call to the president, but on behalf of the regional public organization of the Sverdlovsk region, "Protection of nature", was then published on the website Change.org shortly before the "straight line" with Putin. In the call, locals complained that more than 100,000 tons of hazardous waste of 1 and 2 clbades had been imported into the city, which has become a "mega dump of highly toxic chemical waste" . Nearly 3,000 people subscribed to the call, less than 1% of the city's population.

At that time, the locals had been fighting for three years with the company Emploi, which manages the landfill site. They wrote to various authorities asking them to check the company and close the dumpster, but received answers.

In 2015, the case came to court – the Arbitration Court of the Sverdlovsk region has, according to the court case file, acknowledged the invalidation of the land lease contract entered into with Us LLC on the request of the Deputy Prosecutor of the Sverdlovsk region.

But Uralinformburo wrote that the same year, the city's contract of administration with utilis was renewed. In fact, nothing has changed.

Last winter, local MP Dmitry Nikanorov, who was among the people involved in the consequences of the Chernobyl accident, also decided to fight against a chemical dump. He started doing it after local activists approached him. He began drafting inquiries from deputy ministers and trying to resolve the problem of a discharge with the city administration.

When he first arrived at the dump of Use last year, last winter he saw tire tracks coated with a yellow substance on the snow, which led from the dump to the neighboring garages. Then everything has spread in the city.

"We came over there and I was horrified to see that we had legs in that kek, in that toxic yellow stuff. We are with [мэром города Александром] Baranov is held in a snowdrift and the feet have been cleaned, "he recalls.

When Nikanorov began to tackle the problem of landfills, he found that about 20 million rubles a year went from use to the city budget for a negative impact on the environment, but they went to the "pot common "expenses. And there is no reserve to cover the environmental damage in the city.

And things started. Has managed to reach the local administration, said Nikanorov. Mizyulin believes that everything happened after the letter to the president.

Inspectors of the Federal Regional Department biomedical agencies (FMBA). After verification, they complained to the Novouralsk court. The court suspended the work of the discharge.

In the agency bbc responded that following the audit, "inconsistencies in waste clbad data" had been identified, which had been brought to the landfill by Sredneuralsk's copper smelter, Uralelectromedy and MMSK. All of these companies are included in the Ural mines and foundries company "(UMMC).

FMBA complains about how the waste was transported and stored. At the same time, the agency has not revealed the harmful effects of the discharge on the environment and public health.

In Rosprirodnadzor, in the Urals Federal District, reported BBC that they plan to initiate administrative proceedings against the company and the manager regarding the results of the inspections.

The mayor of the city of Baranov, in May this year, has publicly asked to stop importing garbage into the city as of June 1. So it seemed to the militants that the victory was already close, but luck suddenly turned away from them.

User appealed the suspension of work before the Arbitration Court of the Sverdlovsk region. This is due to the fact that the regional court has not started to look into the problems of the inhabitants of the small town, said bbc one of the activists. At the meeting, there was not even one of the residents and activists. "We have not been listened to," said one of the activists to the correspondent. BBC.

The dump is opened again. C & # 39; bbc confirmed in the regional FNBA. However, according to Mizyulin, only construction waste, not chemical waste, is brought there. "We do not give chemical waste there, we go there periodically to check it," he says.

According to the records of the Arbitration Court of the Sverdlovsk region, the administration of Novouralsk attempted this year to terminate an agreement with Us regarding the lease of land on which is located the landfill .

The court denied them, the administration appealed this decision. Formally, because on the territory of the landfill there are buildings belonging to Us. December 18 will be a new trial.

The inhabitants of the city are convinced that the fight is not over. According to several residents who I spoke to BBC UMMC has promised to stop the import of waste into the city as of January 1, 2019.

"All this huge mbad falls on the city, on us, on our children, on our grandchildren," says Nikanorov. Everything is destroyed, everything is in ruins. The city with intellectual potential is indeed the owner of three dumps.

Natalia tries all the time to get treatment for Serezha. "I would face the threat of destruction of my son's health. Our doctors have just sent us to the resort and are trying to help themselves, but advanced technologies are needed here, "she complains, adding that there is no such specialists in the city.

bbc sent a request to the municipal administration, the UMMC and to Us, but did not receive a response at the time of publication.