The Rivers Ran Black

By MICHAEL D. LEMONICK

No one would ever accuse the former Soviet republics of going overboard on environmental protection. But even by their low standards, the news that began trickling out of Russia last week was appalling. A ruptured pipeline in the northwestern Komi republic has dumped a huge amount of oil onto the Arctic landscape, contaminating wetlands and fouling waterways. An eyewitness reported that on one river the crude has formed a noxious slick measuring six to seven miles long, 14 yards wide and a yard deep. The spill's total volume, say U.S. Department of Energy officials, could be as much as 2 million bbl., some eight times the amount dumped in Alaska by the Exxon Valdez.

Or maybe not. The Russians insist that the real figure is only a one- twentieth as large, and no one has been able to prove them wrong. Bad weather closed area airports for most of last week, while a persistent cloud cover prevented orbiting spy satellites from photographing the spill. But even if the Russian estimates are accurate, says William White, the U.S. Deputy Secretary of Energy, "that's a lot of oil."

In either case, the environmental damage could be devastating. Says Warner Chabot, an official with the Washington-based Center for Marine Conservation: "If the oil enters the Pechora River and flows into the Barents Sea, it will destroy wetlands, salmon runs and breeding grounds for shorebirds." Conditions in the Arctic are so harsh that plants and animals already live on the edge of survival. It can take decades for a tree to grow just a few feet, and tire tracks in tundra vegetation may persist for up to 100 years.

Whatever the volume of escaped petroleum, the spill is just part of a much bigger problem. Russia has more than a million miles of gas and oil pipelines, many of them poorly maintained and some in very bad shape. Every year, up to a fifth of Russia's total oil production is lost -- partly to theft, but much of it through leakage. Komineft, the company whose oil is now polluting the northern terrain, is one of the most consistent offenders. For six years, says Stephen MacSerraigh of the oil industry magazine Nefte Compass, "the Komineft pipelines have averaged about 10 leaks a month. If you fly over them, you constantly see puddles of oil on the ground."

The pipeline that ruptured was evidently the worst of a bad bunch. "It was corroded and had holes all over it," says Mikhail Bernstein, an executive at a construction firm that was hired last August to replace the 19-year-old conduit. Local officials don't disagree. "We all know the pipeline should have been repaired," said Vyacheslav Bibikov, Vice President of the Komi republic, in a testy meeting with reporters last week. "There's no money for it." Rather than stop the flow of oil and lose income, Komineft erected earthworks to contain the gathering crude. When the autumn rains came, the makeshift dikes crumbled, and the oil escaped.

News of the spill was contained much more effectively than the oil. It wasn't until weeks later, when an American oil-company worker was brought in to consult on the cleanup, that the rest of the world learned what had happened. The U.S., Germany and Denmark have offered to help, but by week's end the Russians had not responded. To hear Bibikov talk, they won't have to. He claims that the oil fouled only a few miles of the nearby Kolva River and that the water has been 90% cleaned up. The remaining oil, he says, covers less than 50 acres of swampland. Most factory workers in the area were . deployed with shovels to try to scoop up the mess. When the ground freezes for the winter, the Russians will be able to bring in heavy equipment to finish the job.

Much of the information coming out of Komi is suspect. A local civilian defense official asserted firmly, for example, that "not one bird, not one animal has died" from the oil. That's highly implausible, even if it were possible to know such a thing. Bibikov insists the Pechora River was unaffected. Yet a spokesman for Greenpeace in Moscow says fishermen almost 300 miles downriver on the Pechora reported large amounts of oil in their nets last week.

Local villagers interviewed by TIME said they have suffered for years from the effects of petroleum pollution. "The river used to have lots of fish," said Vyacheslava Topova, who lives in Kolva, a river town in the region. "Now there are hardly any fish at all, and when we cook them, they smell bad. People here survive, but they are really worried about the future." This spill may be cleaned up by spring, as Bibikov insists. But unless Russia overhauls its aging, corroding pipelines, they will keep springing leaks and spoiling the landscape.

With reporting by Sally B. Donnelly/Kolva, Terence Nelan/Moscow and Dick Thompson/Washington