Oxygen Cocktails in Apocalyptic Nikel

NIKEL, Far North -- They serve oxygen cocktails in the health spa of this Russian Arctic settlement and teach ecology in the school on Lenin Square. The sugary foam drinks have oxygen pumped into them because there is less oxygen in the air near the polar zones.


But the residents of Nikel know it will take a lot more than these drinks or increased awareness about conservation to limit, let alone stop, the damage to their surroundings and health.


They live in a waste land -- a post-apocalyptic landscape of black dust piled on hillsides dotted with stunted trees.


Above them towers the culprit; the Pechengonikel smelter built by Soviet workers after World War II in a long-disputed region called "Pine Trees" by the original inhabitants -- Saami reindeer-herders also known as Lapps.


"When I came to Nikel in 1946 the area near the smelter was all forest, so deep that children were afraid to go in. Now ... it's all burned up by the pitiless work of the combine," said one of the oldest residents, Anfisa Yeromova.


Nikel, halfway between Moscow and the North Pole, is not unique in Russia. The last few years have revealed environmental disasters across the former Soviet Union, created and then hidden by a system bent on achieving industrial and military might at all costs.


Moscow no longer tries to hide the problem, although there is a military checkpoint along the icy road to Nikel from the Arctic port of Murmansk and officials are wary of strangers.


The main reason for their caution is also a major reason why here, unlike in many of Russia's other environmental blackspots, there is a chance that something may be done. Nikel, one of two towns with big nickel smelters on the remote Kola peninsula, lies less than 10 kilometers from the Norwegian border in an area bristling with military bases.


The ecology classes are part of a joint initiative with Norway, where people are worried by the mess on their doorstep and anxious to help their struggling neighbor clear it up.


"Today this single spot emits six times more sulphur compounds into the atmosphere than the whole of Norwegian industry," said a Norwegian official.


"More of our acid rain comes from British industry but here the pollution is localized and easy to clean," he added.


Oslo has offered to put up about $45 million of the $260 million it will cost to reconstruct the plant on modern, environment-friendly lines and in September, Russia pledged a similar sum.


But many people fear the project may never get off the ground.


"We have a government resolution assuming they will start financing from January," said Boris Gulevich, technical director of the combine's parent company, Norilsk Nickel. "But it is no secret that we can't do this without budget money ... We haven't got anything yet, it's all on paper."


Environmentalists say the other local nickel plant, Severonikel, is an even worse polluter, spewing out heavy metals over a town described in a glossy brochure as "a pleasant oasis lost among the severe expanses of the Far North."


Both plants say they cannot pay up because they are owed by suppliers. Their parent company says the only way it can afford the reconstruction is if the government gives it tax breaks on its output, expected to rise 10 percent this year.


But the combines of Norilsk Nickel, one of the world's leading producers of the metal and a foreign exchange earner, are in no danger of closure despite their debts to the state and environmental problems.