Kazakhs could lose largest lake

	Photo: REUTERS/SHAMIL ZUMATOV

Kazakhstan may face an ecological disaster on the scale of the drying out of the Aral Sea if it does not adopt better water management practices and win Chinese cooperation, the United Nations has warned.

A 1960s Soviet plan to re-direct water for cotton irrigation from rivers that fed into the Aral Sea starved what was once the world’s fourth largest lake, leaving two separate bodies of water in a wasteland of salty mud.

Central Asia’s second biggest lake, Lake Balkhash, is now also in danger, accoding to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). Forty times the size of Lake Geneva, Balkhash lies 250 miles north of the Kazakh commercial city Almaty.

The Ili River, the principal of seven tributaries leading to Lake Balkhash, flows from northwestern China’s Xinjiang province into Balkhash, which lies wholly in Kazakhstan.

The lake, half salt and half fresh water, has already suffered from industrial pollution, but too much usage of the Ili’s water in China could seal its fate, the UNDP said. Kazakhstan also misuses its water. Farms do not pay market rates, and as many as one in three rural residents do not have access to clean drinking water.

Although cleaning up drinking water requires investment, the UNDP has said the solution is mainly a question of changing attitudes and behaviours.


Saving storks

	Photo: COURTESY OF RUSENSKI LOM NATURAL PARK

This spring the directorate of Bulgaria’s Rusenski Lom nature park built a new nest for a pair of rare black storks whose previous home had been destroyed by poachers.

With the help of volunteer alpinists, a handmade wooden platform was elevated to the nest location, upon which branches were arranged.

The two storks observed the operation from a distance, but later accepted the contraption as their new home. The pair have been using the nesting site for more than 10 years.

Black storks, Egyptian vultures, and other rock-nesting birds make their nests in cavities or small caves in the canyons of the park.

Rusenski Lom natural park covers 3,408 hectares south of the town of Ruse, Bulgaria. It includes the canyons of the rivers that form Rusenski Lom, the Danube River’s last tributary on its southern side. It was proclaimed a natural park in 1996.


Cyanide pollutes Romanian river

Romania’s Agriculture, Forestry, Waters and Environment Ministry reported in March that toxic waste containing cyanide had spilled into a river in the northeast of the country and could pose health hazards and kill fish.

Cyanhydric acetone, used in the production of detergents, leaked from a storage tank at the Metadet chemical plant in Falticeni, 500 km north of Bucharest, into Somuzul Mare, a tributary of the Siret River, which flows into the Danube. The plant has been out of operation since 2000 but still houses tanks storing chemicals. “We estimate that 10 tonnes of toxic substances leaked into the river,” the ministry’s Ioan Jelev told Reuters. He said, however, that several tonnes had been drained out of the river.

Shortly after the spill, a team of experts took samples to determine the concentration of cyanide downstream from the plant. A ministry official said the police were investigating the causes of the incident. “Samples of water taken from various areas of the Somuzul Mare showed that the river has been polluted around the plant,” Jelev said.

Preliminary data showed a concentration of about 3.0 milligrams per litre (the EU’s permissible level is 0.005 milligrams). A similar incident occurred in 2001 in the same place, poisoning fish. The ministry advised residents not to use water from the river or wells or eat fish from the river.

Bulgarian nuclear project moves forward

The Bulgarian government has released an environment impact assessment (EIA) on a proposed nuclear power plant at Belene and the environmental ministry has given its stamp of approval. Bulgarian NGOs have formed a coalition against the project, and a website was launched by the BlueLink Information Network to help fight the proposal.

Bulgaria has one nuclear power plant at Kozloduy on the Danube River. Another plant, which would consist of four VVER-1000/320 units, has long been planned at Belene, but construction was halted in 1991 because of opposition by local residents, Bulgarian scientists and environmental groups. The Belene site is also on the Danube and has raised concerns because of seismic activity in the area.

The government has revived the proposal in recent years. A petition in favour of the project, which officials say will help ensure the country’s energy independence, has collected more than a million signatures.

Bulgaria’s Ministry of Environment and Water has given a positive evaluation of the EIA report. Public hearings on the EIA were scheduled in several communities in Bulgarian; the last to be held on May 5. Jan Haverkamp, an antinuclear activist for the Praguebased World Information Service on Energy, claims the government is violating global conventions by not giving the public adequate time to review English language information on the project. Bulgaria’s National Electric Company (NEK) posted an English-language summary of the EIA’s non-technical summary, although its link did not appear on the homepage until the last week in April. “May 4 as the last hearing date is unacceptable in this case,” Haverkamp wrote in an e-mail interview.

While Haverkamp has been unable to get English-language information on the EIA, his colleagues in Bulgaria have charged that it did not give due attention to renewable energy alternatives and energy-efficiency measures.

A report on the necessary investment, and the five foreign interests that hope to build the plant, was due out in May. According to official sources, communities near the project site favour the plan.

Radiation victims paid

Three residents of the Russian city of Karabolka have won judgments awarding them small compensation for health problems stemming from a half-century-old nuclear catastrophe.

The court awarded each of the three plaintiffs just USD 8 a month allowances, plus an annual stay at a Russian spa. But the verdict represents the Russian state’s first admission of responsibility for a disaster that has been covered up since 1957.

The plaintiffs were children when they were assigned to help clean up after an explosion at the Mayak nuclear research facility that rained radioactive waste on a quarter million people. They were among some 1,500 ethnic Tatar farmers, including children from the fourth-grade and up, who were sent into "hot zones" to do the dirty work, which included the burial of dead livestock, the cleaning-up of contaminated building materials and the disposal of crops rendered inedible.

Many of the “young liquidators,” as the children came to be known, died from radiation-related diseases soon after the explosion, which few people know about even today. The children and grandchildren of the liquidators inherited an array of congenital health problems, and they, too, have begun filing damage claims.

Today, just 520 or Karbolka’s original 2,900 residents remain. According to one of the surviving liquidators, most are too sick or old to press their claims against the state.

Study faults US on high-tech waste

	Photo: REUTERS/REGIS DUVIGNAU

UN member nations should promote longer-lasting computers and recycling of old hardware to avoid high-tech environmental hazards, revealed a UN study published in March.

Manufacturing a 24 kg desktop computer with its screen requires 10 times its weight in fossil fuels and chemicals, the study said.

In comparison, a car or a refrigerator requires just twice its weight in natural resources.

The UN study found that manufacturing a computer and screen takes at least 240 kg of fossil fuels, 22 kg of chemicals and 1.5 tonnes of water — totalling more than the weight of a rhinoceros.

Microprocessors are a top culprit “because of their extremely light weight in relation to the enormous quantities of energy and chemicals needed for their manufacture,” one of the study’s authors, Ruediger Kuehr, told the French Press Agency, AFP. Thirteen countries, mostly European, have passed laws on computer recycling, said Eric Williams, co-author of the study, which recognised the efforts of Japan and Taiwan.

The government of the United States, the biggest producer and consumer of personal computers, has taken no steps to limit the environmental impact of these machines, according to the study. “The environmental consciousness is definitely lower in the United States,” Williams said. He noted the tendency of President George W. Bush’s administration not to favour regulation.

US sales of office computers increase annually by 10 percent while, worldwide, 130 million computers are sold each year. “Most of the computers are made in the United States,” Kuehr said. “It is a matter of economics.”

Parliamentarians balk at reining in bank

A critical report on the European Investment Bank (EIB) lost much of its bite during an April reading in the Economic and Monetary Committee (EMAC) of the European Parliament. The report from MEP Monica Ridruejo addressed issues such as good governance, transparency and accountability at the EIB, the EU’s house bank. At the end of the meeting, Ridruejo voted against her own radically altered report and withdrew her name from it.

Five members of EMAC proposed 125 amendments, which asked for the deletion of 14 of the report’s 32 paragraphs. Leading the way, MEP Robert Goebbels (PSE, Luxembourg) wanted to delete 28 of 32 paragraphs. “It is extremely alarming that the European Parliament has voted against all of the recommendations calling on the EU house bank to live up to international governance and transparency standards,” said Magda Stoczkiewicz, leading the EIB reform campaign for CEE Bankwatch and Friends of the Earth International.

Martin Koehler, from the Italian Campaign to Reform the World Bank, commented, “What MEP Ridruejo demanded of the EIB could have been drawn from a corporate handbook. No shareholder in a private company would object to such demands, and no corporation would do less in order to make its shareholders remain confident.”

In an e-mail, Geobbels’ office charged that Ridruejo’s report contained several false allegations, and, because she would not redraft the report, following the request of all political groups, Goebbels introduced amendments to delete certain paragraphs. “Mr. Goebbels is not against more transparency, and neither is the EP,” wrote Goebbels’ assistant Veronique Ferro, adding that the new European Parliament will be obliged to hold a public hearing on the matter next autumn, during which the president of the EIB is obliged to report on the bank’s policies.

Less ‘luv’ for SUVs

	Photo: REUTERS/CHIP EAST

Record U.S. petrol prices have Americans shopping for more fuel-efficient cars, and dampening their love for SUVs, according to Reuters.

CarMax Group Inc., which operates car dealerships across the United States, cut its earnings outlook in May, sending its shares down more than 13 percent, and those of competitors by 2 to 4 percent.

The average retail price of petrol hit a record high of USD 1.95 per gallon (EUR 0.42/litre), up about 30 percent from a year ago. European prices hover around EUR 1.0/litre. “I guess people just figure that prices will never go down," said Tim Murphy, a Toyota dealer in Goleta, California. Demand is up for the Prius hybrid petrol-electric car, while sales have softened for the Sequoia and Land Cruiser large SUVs, he said.