Odessa is on the verge of an environmental disaster - the authorities are inactive
Stranded near the Odessa coast tanker "Delphi" still continues to release petroleum products into the Black Sea, but local and central authorities are doing nothing to eliminate the environmental disaster.
Deputy from the “Opposition Platform – For Life” Tatyana Plachkova stated this during the plenary meeting of the Verkhovna Rada, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“For almost half a month now, oil products have been leaking from the Delphi tanker, which sank in Odessa. On the first day after the accident, the level of pollution in the Black Sea water exceeded the norm by 157 times. The level of pollution today is generally unknown.
According to environmentalists, hazardous substances are now spreading along the entire Black Sea coast and settling to the bottom. With warming, a dangerous film will cover the entire Black Sea, and this poses a great threat to the ecology of Odessa, the Black Sea and Ukraine as a whole. We are standing on the verge of an environmental disaster, but the official authorities are silent.
Back on November 25, I sent an appeal to the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine, the Ministry of Energy and Environmental Protection, and the head of the Odessa Regional Administration with a demand to urgently assemble a commission at the government level on emergency situations and man-made environmental safety. Such a meeting was not convened even at the regional level. But the situation has not yet been recognized as an emergency.
Moreover, given such a significant level of pollution, as confirmed by environmentalists, local authorities would have the opportunity today to appeal to the Cabinet of Ministers and recognize the situation as an emergency at the state level. But the authorities continue to remain silent.
At the same time, tourists get to the tanker. What they take from there is generally unknown. The internal condition of the tanker has not been studied. Degassing has not been carried out. The logbooks have not been officially confiscated, but have already circulated on the Internet. Emergency authorities believe that an explosion may occur.
We still haven’t been told how much oil products spilled into the sea, how much was left, and what was actually transported on this tanker. We have still not been informed about whether there is a real danger to the life and health of Odessa residents.
The dangerous tanker, located today on the shore of the Odessa Sea, urgently needs to be removed from there in the next 10-15 days, otherwise we will not move it from the Odessa shore at all. But the authorities are silent here, and at this time the sea is dying,” said the parliamentarian.
Tatyana Plachkova also asked that her appeal be considered an official parliamentary request to the Cabinet of Ministers, the regional state administration, the Sea Ports Administration, the Odessa City Hall and the State Emergency Service.
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