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To Protect the Chir River from Oil Wastes of the Previous Century

In Stanitsa Karghinskaya on the territory of the historic and cultural memorial “Estate of T.A. Karghin”, a site of the State M.A. Sholokhov Museum-Reserve, there was found an object of the past ecological damage.

It was in 1905, when in Stanitsa Karghinskaya at the estate of the Cossack Timofey Andreyevich Karghin a mill was put into exploitation. A year later an oilery was set up for processing sunflower seeds.

The machine sector of the mill and oilery was equipped with two oil combustion engines. To provide their work a special oil reservoir with a solid cast iron lid was put up near the mill. During the operation of the engines highly inflammable oil substances are burnt out with the remains being collected in a special metal tank. As it was filled up, its contents were pumped out and replaced for oil at the oil-point in Millerovo. This condition was strictly observed till 1919.

Within the following fifty years the buildings of the mill and oilery went through numerous changes, but still the mill engines operated permanently providing the population with flour. The intensive exploitation resulted in a great amount of wastes accumulated, with the tank overfilled, but the oil wastes ceased to be taken at the oil-point, and great amounts of them were poured down into the ground man-made pits.

The authorities who administered the structure at that time decided to “bury the oil wastes”, that is to cover them with a thick layer of soil. According to the old residents there were more than five big ground pits of different kinds oil wastes.

Now, in the XXI century, a serious problem has emerged. The fact is that in 20 metres from the oil-waste burial place the River Chir flows. In spring the territory of the estate is flooded, and the subsoil waters carry the pit contents into the Chir threatening the water protecting zone greatly.

The pits endangering the ecology were discovered in June of 2010, when the Museum-Reserve began the museumfication of the estate territory of T.A. Karghin. Our apply to the Committee on  the environment protection and natural resources of the Rostov Region Administration was followed by setting up a commission, which studied the problem and made a conclusion: “… on the territory of the historic and cultural memorial “The Estate of T.A. Karghin” there was discovered an object of the past ecological damage”.

Now it is impossible to find those who were guilty of the crime of 1919. The Museum-Reserve assumed a responsibility for recultivating the estate territory with the means for it being allotted by the Regional budget. But the present-day managers must take this experience into consideration and bear responsibility for future generations.

There are still a number of enterprises trying “to pour off the wastes of their industries” into the depths of the earth. But after these deeds the Sholokhov country can lose very soon its status of the purest ecological region.

Tatiyana Likhovidova
Pyotr Donskov