FRONTAL SURVEYS OF BURIAL SITES OF OBSOLETE PESTICIDES CONTINUE IN BELARUS

The International Technical Assistance Project "GEF-6 Belarus POPs Legacy and Sustainable Chemicals Management" intends to conduct frontal surveys of two obsolete pesticide burial sites: Verkhnedvinsk in the Vitebsk region and Drybin in the Mogilev region.

Currently, there are five obsolete pesticide burial sites in the Republic of Belarus, three of them have already been surveyed by the Project (Postavy and Gorodok in the Vitebsk region and Petrikov in the Gomel region).

The survey will make it possible to determine the extent and degree of the impact of these facilities on the environment and public health.

The contractors of the survey services under the contracts with the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environmental Protection of the Republic of Belarus will be: the Republican Unitary Enterprise "Central Research Institute for Complex Use of Water Resources" (RUE CRICUWR) – for the Drybin burial site of obsolete pesticides and the Belarusian State University (Faculty of Geography and Geoinformatics) – for the Verkhnedvinsk burial site of obsolete pesticides.

As part of the first stage, the terms of reference provide for reconnaissance survey and aerial photography of burial sites with adjacent territories and soil sampling for subsequent measurement of their contamination with chemicals.

At the second stage, specialists will determine the presence and the rate of the pollution spread in the area of the burial sites and assess the potential risks of the impact of the burial sites on the environment and public health.

The main final documents of work carried out within the project will be action plans for the elimination of the burial sites with the assessment of the timing and cost of their implementation, including a financial and economic justification.