OREANDA-NEWS. June 09, 2011. Dmitry Medvedev inspected several environmentally unfriendly facilities before the State Council Presidium meeting on environmental safety.

The chemical waste storage facility at the Kaprolaktam plant, part of the Sibur holding, is one of such places. It was commissioned nearly 40 years ago and is 97% full. In 2013, the plant will close its manufacture of chlorine and rubber and there will no longer be a need for the storage facility. The company is considering two options for the elimination of the facility: processing sludge into useful products or shutting the facility down in line with industrial and environmental standards.

The city of Dzerzhinsk in the Nizhny Novgorod Region is one of Russia’s major chemical industry centres. The ecological situation in the city remains complex due to both significant amounts of accumulated industrial waste and the pollution caused by plants.

In addition to general environmental safety issues, the State Council Presidium will consider ways of tackling accumulated environmental damage and proposals on improving the environment both in Dzerzhinsk and the Nizhny Novgorod Region as a whole.