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Help, the Famous Caviar is Running Out!
Cleaning Up the Polluted Black Sea
ON THE EDGE OF THE FORMER SOVIET UNION, WITH ROMANTIC NAMES LIKE THE CRIMEA, ODESSA AND ISTANBUL –
THAT’S WHERE YOU FIND THE BLACK SEA. THE CRIMEA USED TO BE A GORGEOUS AREA WHERE RICH RUSSIANS
TRADITIONALLY SPENT VACATIONS IN LUXURIOUS SEASIDE RESORTS.
You must consider the Black Sea a landlocked pool that depends on rivers – particularly the Danube – that
flow through twenty-two countries. These rivers collect a lot of pollution, most of which doesn’t break
down naturally. Wim Verheugt, who works at one of the Arnhem-based offices of ARCADIS:
"Each of those countries is still discharging its factories’ waste waters and sewage without any form
of clean-up. Not so unusual, of course; in fact in the early days, people from everywhere – in general –
did not think about "cleaning up the environment". As a result, the Black Sea has become
immensely polluted,"
says Wim. "And you can’t simply clean it up with a net." Also the groundwater is threatened.
What used to be storage facilities for pesticides and other chemicals are now basically toxic waste dumps
that needs to be dealt with immediately.
BALLAST WATER
In many ways, the polluted area has become a serious economic problem, like for instance, the
tourists that are staying away from the beaches. But the Black Sea is commercially important for many
other reasons, not in the least because the entrance to the Black Sea is one of the world’s busiest
shipping channels. Through the extremely narrow Bosporus, yachts pass both ways, and oil is transported
out of the area. "When these tankers come back, they often carry very small animals from other parts of
the world as stowaways in the ships’ ballast water, which is then discharged without treatment into the
Black Sea. This further upsets the ecosystem and also affects the smaller Caspian Sea to the East",
elaborates Wim. Everything – from the small fish to the beautiful dolphins – is in danger and that
includes the sturgeons where the famous caviar comes from. No more fancy cruise boats with tourists
and completely collapsed fishery and aquaculture industries: you can imagine what that does to the economy.
MANY GOVERNMENTS INVOLVED
Last May, the European Union renewed its commitment to help, by awarding a contract to our
company to provide support to the Black Sea Environmental Programme. Wim: "The contract, worth about
three million euros, is for the delivery of technical assistance in a broad range of disciplines,
including monitoring of the water quality. Others will be asked to construct clean-up facilities,
and we can help with that too. Creating support for governments and their local populations for
their environmental policies is obviously another vital component. "You can do this in several ways,
like working with interactive web sites, and other kind of information tools. Another possibility
could be to establish new laws, for example requiring anti-pollution fees from ships that enter
the Black Sea through the very narrow Bosporus. Why not? They all need to register anyway."
I wrote the above article for ARCADIS Elements, in which it was published in September 2002.
Angelina Souren
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