City of Mariupol

Mariupol is a city of regional significance in south eastern Ukraine, situated on the north coast of the Sea of Azov at the mouth of the Kalmius river, in the Pryazovia region. It is the tenth-largest city in Ukraine, and the second largest in the Donetsk Oblast with a population of 449,498 (2017 est.). The city is largely and traditionally Russophone, while ethnically the population is divided about evenly between Russians and Ukrainians. Mariupol was founded on the site of a former Cossack encampment named Kalmius and granted city rights in 1778. It has been a centre for the grain trade, metallurgy, and heavy engineering, including the Illich Steel & Iron Works and Azovstal. Mariupol has played a key role in the industrialization of Ukraine.

Due to the Soviet authorities frequently renaming cities after Communist leaders, the city was known as Zhdanov, after the Soviet functionary Andrei Zhdanov, between 1948 and 1989. Today, Mariupol remains a centre for industry, as well as higher education and business.

Mariupol leads Ukraine in the volume of emissions of harmful substances by industrial enterprises. Recently, the city’s leading enterprises have begun to address the ecological problems. Thus, over the last 15 years industrial emissions have fallen nearly in half.

Due to stable production by the majority of the large industrial enterprises, the city constantly experiences environmental problems. At the end of the 1970s, Zhdanov (Mariupol) ranked third in the USSR (after Novokuznetsk and Magnitogorsk) in the quantity of industrial emissions. In 1989, including all enterprises, the city had 5,215 sources of atmospheric pollution producing 752,900 tons of harmful substances a year (about 98% from metallurgical enterprises and “Markokhim”). Even given some easing of the maximum-permissible concentrations (maximum concentration limit) in the state’s industrial activity (in the mid-1990s), many pollution limits were still exceeded:

• 1.3 times for ammonia
• 1.3 times for phenol
• 2.0 times for formaldehyde

In the residential areas adjoining the industrial giants, concentrations of benzapiren reach 6–9 times the maximum concentration limits; fluoric hydrogen, ammonia, and formaldehyde reach 2–3 to 5 times the maximum concentration limits; dust and oxides of carbon, and hydrogen sulphide are 6-8 times the maximum concentration limits; and dioxides of nitrogen are 2-3 times the maximum concentration limits. The maximum concentration limit has been exceed on phenol by 17x, and on benzapiren by 13-14x.

Ill-considered arrangements of the construction platforms of Azovstal and Markokhim (an economy in transport charges was assumed, both during construction in the 1930s and during the subsequent operation) have led to extensive wind-borne emissions into the central areas of Mariupol. Wind intensity and geographical “flatness” offer relief from the accumulation of long-standing pollutants, somewhat easing the problem.

The nearby Sea of Azov is in distress. The catch of fish in the area has been reduced by orders of magnitude over the last 30–40 years.

The environmental protection activity of the leading industrial enterprises in Mariupol costs millions of hrivnas, but it appears to have little effect on the city’s long-standing environmental problems.

Source : Wikipedia