JPRS ID: 10439 WORLDWIDE REPORT ENVIRONMENTAL QUALITY

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: JPRS
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP82-00850R000500050015-5
• Release Decision: RIF
• Original Classification: U
• Document Page Count: 19
• Document Creation Date: November 1, 2016
• Sequence Number: 15
• Content Type: REPORTS

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~ JPRS L/ 10439
~ 6 April 1982 - . .
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~ ENVIRONMENTAL QUALITY
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JPRS L/10439
6 April 1982
WORLDWIDE REPORT
ENVIRONMENTA L ~UALITY
(~'OUO 3/82~
CONTENTS
EAST EUROPE
GERMAN DEMOCRATTC REPUBLIC
Wides pread Pollution Problems Seen Threatening GDR
(Dieter Bub; STERN, Feb 82) 1
SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA
1VIGERIA
New Foundation To Fight Habita Destruction
(Jimoh Omo-Fadaka; NEW AFRICAN, Jan 82) 6
RWANDA
' Briefs
Drought in Eastern Part $
_ USSR
E~vironmental Protection Problems in Northwest Sib erian Gas
Region Examined
(S.T. Bud'kov, A.N. Silin; IZVFSTIYA VYSSHTHIi UCHEBNYIgi
ZAVIDENIY: NEFT'~ GAZ, No 7, 1981) 9
WEST EUROPE
FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF ERMANY
Air, Water Polluted Ry Illegal Poison Gas Production
(Rudolf Mueller; STERN, 11 Feb 82~ 15
- a - [III - WW - 139 FOUO]
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FOR OFFICIAL USE Or~LY
GEF,?~1AN DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC
WIDESPREAD POLLUTION PROBLEMS SEEN THREATENING GDR
Hamburg STERN in German Vol 35 No 6, 4 Feb 82 pp 58-62
[F.eport by DietF~~ Bub: "The Mess From Over There: In the GDR Hardly Anything
Is Done for Envi,ronmental Protection. Water and Air Are Heavi3y Burdened With
Industrial Toxicants. Via the Elbe and Werra Rivers, the Pollution Enters
Also the Federal Republic"]
[Text] When evening falls on the socialist German fatherland, thick clouds
darken the sky between Rostock and Karl-Marx-Stadt. In factories and~power
plants the filter systems are shut off. From the smokestacks sulfur-yellow,
brown, gray and black wisps rise up--smoke s3gnals of an industrial state in
which fulfilling the plan has priority over environmental protection. That
which stinks to high heaven in East Germany and bubbles in the rivers can
alway~ be measured by the toxicants in the West.
On paper environmental protection in the GDR is guaranteed. In 1963 a water
_ management law was passed, in 1970 a law concerning the plan-based development
of socialist environmental control. There is a Ministry for Environmental
Protection and Water Ma.nagement. In the bezirks "standing commissions" meet
to which experts are appointed. Everywhere in the country honorar~~ h~lpers
are going around k�ho are sia.pposed to prevent damage and catch little sinners.
But the big ones are allowed to get away. The environmental control law, in
elastic clauses, provides for keeping the air clean and combatting noise--to
be sure only following the "social requirements" of productian.. The authars
were obviously of the opinion, which has been propagated for years, that
environmental pollution is typical only of capitalism, but in the socialist
social order is "alien to the system."
The GDR has its environmental scandals just as the FRG does. The inhabitants
of Hettstedt near Halle were exposed for decades to ~a by far stronger lead
poison than.the citizens in Goslar in the ERG. Yet no on~ heard anything ~
about it. Even today the fact is ~oncealed that after shutting down the lead
refining plant vegetables and crops still contain too much lead.
J
In Blankenstein so much unpurified waste water was fed into the Saale
reservoirs from the previously private and then state cellulose paper factory
that in 1977 the water "flippea:" Above the river hydrogen sulfide flared,
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~r~~~c Nrri~,iha, u,~ vivLy
shipping had to be stopped, ~ part of the population had to be temporarily
evacuated. Only with the use of water aeration units was it possible to avert
- the danger. Anly after that did the state authorize the money for the
construction of a clarifi~cation plant.
_ Even today the Buna Chentical Works feeds between 45 and 90 kg of poiaonous
cyanide into the Saale t'di.ver every hour. After rowers of the "Halle Chemistry"
sport clu3 fainted during training, air measurements in the region of the Wehre
River in the city are~ of Halle exceeded by 50 times the usual inzernationally
accepted maxim~ emi~,oion values for residential areas.
The alarmed GDR Counci.l of Ministers resolved to expand quickly the Buna ~
clarification plant by the end of 1980. Since then the proj ect has been
postponed by at least 2 years.
Of course, the top athletes of "Halle Chemistry" no longer have to train on
the filthy wa~te water from the factories, but the children of the enterprise
sport clubs "En:F~r" and "Turbine" continue to be sent onto the polluted river
in spite of warnings by doctors and scientists. Along the bank you can rent
rowboats for a boat outing, and at the Giebichenstein bridge across from the
"Pitcher at t~:e Sign of the Green Wreath," a restaurant catering to excursions,
the steamers of' the "White Fleet" depart in the direction of Bernbur~ on the
dead black river.
- In 1971, the office of the head river master put forth a program for keeping
_ the Saale River clean and it was passed by the chief bezirk authority. The
chief mawox of Halle promised for 1975 new swimming pleasures on the banks of
the Saa1P River. If he were to venture into the river today, he would have
to figure nn heavy damage to his health. The grand plans have long since
been filed.
The Niulde River is also totally polluted. The river in Saxony is turning into
a sewer because of the largest crop pesticide producer in the GDR, the
Bittez�feld C:~emical Combine. Every day 120,000 cubic meters of chemical waste
water are fed into the river through a feeder and a canal.
addition, organically polluted waste water comes from the Wolfen
� I'hutochemical Combi:,e. The Mulde River is so heavily polluted t~.-~at in a test,
in which the river water was diluted 20 times, half the fish in it perished.
Axel-Thomas Lilie, former manager of the state water inspectorate in Halle
Bezirk who lives in the West today, explained to .the STERN that the GDR, in
the 33 years since its establishemnt, had transformed once clean rivers into
waste water sewers:
--the Wipper and Werra Rivers in Thuringia are brine canals;
--the Saale River, in the region of the Bleiloch res~rvoir, is a gigantic
quagmire which stinks of hydr:ogen sulfide and from Leuna on is black slop;
--the Parthe and Weisse Elster Rivers have turned into black foami~ng phenol
rivers; '
_ --the Mulde R3yer, ~xam Bittex�~e1d on, ~s like a Qoisonous sewer ~ipe,

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.
Not only the water, the air, too, is polluted. When in summer 1981 the
; moving van drove up in front of an apartment building in Merseburg 2,
housewife Gisela H. [name known to the editor] breathed G sigh ~f relief. Sh2
~ was moving with her family to Schwerin and in this way was escaping the ,
constant cloud~of poison from the neighboring Leuna works. For years her two
children had suffered from severe respiratory ~roblems. Medical treatment
brought only temporary relief. Chronic bronchitis occurs in the Halle Bezirk
two and one-half times more frequently than in Neubrandenburg Bezirk.
On the average, life expectancy here is 5 years less than in the rest of the
GDR. There are one-fourth more cancer cases and 10 to 15 percent more heart
and circulatory diseases. A ward physician confirmed for the STERN: "Whoever
~ lives in Halle and the environs lives an unhealthy life and a shorter one."
In Leipzig, Karl-Marx-Stadt and Berlin, too, breathing is unhealthy. In
addition to the industrial exhaust gases, the clouds of smoke from the home
heaters which use brown coal briquets pollute the air. Besides dust and ash,
every year four to five million tons af sulfur dioxide rain down on the G~R
(by way of~comparison: every year 3.5 million tans of sulfur dioxide fall on
the FRG which is two and one-half times as big). The forests of the .
Oberlausitz and the Erzgebirge are dying. In the vicinity of the "Schwarze
Pumpe" Brown Coal Combine in the Cottbus Bezirk, which processes 100,000 tons
of crude brown coal every day, in an area of 40 hectares only one-fifth of all
the trees is healthy and more than 10 percent of the star:.ds of forest are
totally destroyed.
There is no money for expensive air filter systems which would have to be
imported from the West. Air pollution over the large cities becomes critical
in the winter months. When during the heating season smoke, cold and increased
air humidity come together and the extiaust gases in a weather inversion
situation cannot move away for days, then, for example, Berlin threatens to ~
suffocate under a layer of smog. Just in the past 2 months in the western
part of the city there were three smog alartns. The magistrate of East Berlin
did not report any special occurrences.
In addi~ion to the chemical industry and brown coal, agriculture is the third
' large environm.ental polluter in the GDR. The use of large areas in the
cooperative and the mass keeping of cattle in the combines resulted in severe
pollution of the soil and ground water. For hi.gher harvest yields entire
tracts of land are covered with fertilizer, agricultural pilots spray
insecticides wHich the rain washes into the brooks. The consequences can ~
. seill be detected in the Baltic Sea. Fishermen on Ruegen complained to
STERN: "This poison is not only destroying the vermin.. It is also making
the fish sick for us. rlore and more liave sores." In 1980 the authoritios had
to admit to a large scale death of eels. Consumption was forbidden.
In order to save construction raterial, large stalls were built which did not
have adequate facilities for removing manure. Thus, in the Seegrehna Cattle
Breeding Plant in Wittenberg kreis, for example, the kreis and bezirk councils
had to authorize putting 5,000 cubic meter.s of liquid manu;-e into the Elbe
River. In Berlstedt large cattle facilities pollute two streams and the
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cvn va�a�~~,ana, a~o~: vi~a.~
gro~nd water. In Trannroda near Weiuar leakage from a green fodder silo got
into the soil and ma.de the drinking water brackish for the city of Kranichfeld.
- A new water pipe cost M1.7 million.
Water is scarce. GDR Minister for Environmental Protection Hans Reichelt
_ explained at the end of 13ovember that by 1985 indu~trial consumption must be
lowered by one-fourth. Only 6.3 percent of the waters are considered "clean."
With 260 milligrams per liter tir~ aitrate content in individual regions
exceeds the GDR's highest possible value of 40 milligrams by an amount that
is six and one-half times greater. For adults this means increased danger of
cancer, and babies are threatened by a severe blood disease (cyanosis). Thus,
in 1980 in the GDR 12,000 small children had to be sup.plied with mineral
water. The number will rise rapidly in the future according to estimates tiy
experts.
The GDR youtt~. journal FORUM established the following: "At present, out of
economic and political necessities, it is not possible to solve in a
- comprehensive way the contradiction between the necessar~y efficiency of the
economy and the essential anvironmental protection."
Even if large demonstrations are not possible in the GDR, such as those in the
FRG against Frankfurt's west runway or the nuclear storage site of ~Gorleben,
there is nonetheless still o~position to the unquestioning belief in socialist
progress.
The Protestant church in the GDR is demanding a radical reorientat~on. Erfurt
theologian Heino Falcke explains: "Basically fihe issue is that we have come
to the limits of how much nature can be polluted, that under the perfected
domination by man nature is threatening to breathe out its 1ast."
In November 1979 the national synod of the Protestant church in~Mecklenburg
demanded public discussion of the opportunities and dangers of the peaceful
use of nuclear energy. Up to then the topic was taboo. The GDR built its
five nucl.ear reactors without complicated licensing procedures. The same is
true of the three nuclear power plants that are under construction. There
were and are neither citizens' initiatives nor demonstrations against the
building of the nuclear power plants of the Soviet type "No~~o-Voronesh,"
whose safety equipment is considered by Western experts to be inadequate.
They do not have a costly emergency cooling system as is prescribed iz~ Western
countries, and their protection against craeking is insufficient. A sport
plane crashing on the factory can result in a catastrophe.
Not only theologians and church newspapers increasingly draw attention to the
dangers for the enviro~ent, even GDR ~ournalists, usually worldmasters at
concealing defects in the "developed socialist society," in the meantime are
showing spirit for environmental protection. Thus, the LEIPZIGER VOLKSZEITUNG
Tn October 1980 report~d: "Everyone knows that the large enterprise in
Boehlen js not exactly dumping.perfume into the Pleisse River." In 1979 the
chemical factory had to pay a fine of M33,000 per day for po3.luting this river.
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The SED paper mentioned a second ex