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Karabash is a town in Chelyabinsk oblast, Russia located about 90 kilometers from Chelyabinsk.

It is one of the largest copper smelting centers of the country. For a time, according to UNESCO, Karabash was considered the most polluted city in the world.

For decades, from the foundation in the beginning of 20th century, the equipment of all the plants producing metals has not changed significantly.

In the production of copper from copper ore, a large number of hazardous substances give off, mainly gases, such as derivatives of lead, sulfur, arsenic, and, indeed, of copper. The emissions of the plants were not cleaned properly and as a result, the total weight of emissions was more than 14 million tons.

The ecological situation in Karabash remains dismal. The emissions from the plant and as a result, acid rains continue to destroy the environment. Along the river Sak-Elga, nothing grows at a distance of 100 meters from the water. Also in recent years the problem of erosion of the town dump by the waters of same river Sak-Elga appeared.

Today, the large-scale reconstruction of copper smelting plant is going on. But will the damage to the environment ever be nullified?

Also, according to recent news, the government of Chelyabinsk oblast “concerned” about the image of the region announced a tender about “providing the services to modify the results of specific search queries in the search engines Yandex and Google”.

Among the queries to modify are “Karabash ecology”, “most polluted city in the world” etc (queries in Russian language). According to the plan about 80% of top results should link to positive or neutral articles about the issue.

What a familiar idea to change the information available about the problem but not to solve the real problem itself. What kind of Russian “modernization” can be discussed after this? How to censor the Internet? I doubt it.

Tags: Chelyabinsk oblast

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