Chechnya faces ecological disaster

Jul 16, 2003 Posted: 16:31 Moscow time (12:31 GMT)

GROZNY - Since 1994, over 20,000 tons of oil products have contaminated Chechen soil and ground waters.

At present, the total of oil products that have contaminated Chechen ground waters amounts to around 2m tons, sources in the Chechen administration reported to RBC.

Experts fear that these products may move into Chechen rivers and the Caspian Sea in the near future. According to information provided by the Chechen government, the Russian Ministry of Natural Resources is considering several alternatives for the decontamination of the ground waters of Grozny, the Chechen capital.

They mentioned, however, that the scale of contamination is so large that coping with it would demand a long time, up-to-date engineering solutions and billions of rubles in expenditures.

/RosBusinessConsulting/