Pipeline to a Cleaner Poland
LAND, THOMAS
SALVAGING THE ENVIRONMENT Pipeline to a Cleaner Poland BY THOMAS LAND Warsaw Beset by an ongoing energy shortage and [he task of salvaging an environment in ruins, Poland's leaders are turning...
...The feelers it has been extending to Statoil of Norway are expected to widen into formal negotiations for the construction of a new Central European gas network...
...In the heavily industrialized Katowice-Krakow region, for example, lead in the soil reaches 19,000 parts per million—about 50 times the accepted limit...
...SALVAGING THE ENVIRONMENT Pipeline to a Cleaner Poland BY THOMAS LAND Warsaw Beset by an ongoing energy shortage and [he task of salvaging an environment in ruins, Poland's leaders are turning to Scandinavia for help in building a pipeline to supply North Sea natural gas...
...The sudden break in the flow had resulted from President Boris N. Yeltsin's unilateral suspension of a $2.8 billion barter agreement involving Polish foodstuffs, pharmaceuticals and a variety of coal-related products...
...For the moment, Poland's energy crisis has been resolved by a new accord reopening the Siberian pipeline...
...Today 39 per cent of the water is virtually unusable even for industrial purposes...
...Its plan calls for closing 80 of the most polluting enterprises, upgrading coal-washing facilities to reduce sulfur and ash, cutting emissions of dust and fumes, and improving urban drinking water supplies...
...The first among its neighbors to approve a comprehensive national environmental policy, Poland has designated 27 "areas of ecological hazard" that embrace 11 per cent of its land area, inhabited by a third of the population...
...A total of 180 major steel mills, foundries, chemical plants, and consumer goods factories, accounting for 70 per cent of national industrial gas consumption, were brought to a halt...
...Poland's industrial sector, comprising energy and manufacturing, employs about 29 per cent of its labor force and creates more than half the gross national product...
...In addition, transport and storage facilities are to be expanded and state-of-the-art processing equipment is to be introduced...
...As a result, air, water and soil pollution now threaten public health, contaminate crops, devastate forests, and degrade buildings...
...The disruption placed in painful relief Poland's vulnerability to manipulation so long as Moscow was its only source of gas outside of its own limited production fields...
...The World Bank and the United Nations Development Program are already contributing to a $250 million gas management project here...
...Help may also be forthcoming from the Nordic Council and the European Community, as it becomes ever more plain that Poland's mess is the world's problem...
...Hence Warsaw's eagerness both to diversify its sources and to improvetheef ficiency of fuel usage...
...The fledgling European democracies are attracted as well by its small capital costs and modern turbine technology...
...People are exposed to danger through ground contact, house dust and agricultural products...
...The episode also exacerbated divisions in a government already grappling with high inflation, high unemployment and declining industrial output reminiscent of the Great Depression...
...A third of all forest lands in Poland and the former Czechoslovakia have suffered severely —in fact, to an extent surpassed within the Continent only in the ex-Soviet territories of Belarus and Kaliningrad...
...Energy-intensive and regionally concentrated heavy industry predominates in the manufacturing area...
...Hungary, the Czech and Slovak Republics, Bulgaria and Romania are looking to the North Sea and elsewhere for reliable fuel supplies...
...only the minimum quantities necessary to prevent machinery from freezing could be burned...
...The effort to reverse the situation—estimated by the author-itative Washington-based World Resources Institute to require some $260 billion over the next 25-30 years in Poland alone—must begin with the establishment of clean and reliable energy sources...
...To foster a well-run, self-supporting energy industry, broad technical and administrative training will be offered to the responsible agencies...
...The impact of ecological factors on health is particularly acute...
...Although households were not affected, industrial managers say the country experienced the biggest enforced work stoppage since World War II...
...Thomas Land, a longtime NL contributor, writes on Third World development...
...Consequently, the world's fourth largest coal producer is no longer a net energy exporter...
...Officials here had been quite satisfied with the original barter arrangement—the largest to be concluded thus far between Russia and one of its former European satellites—for it seemed to have settled at last the country's chronic energy shortage...
...As recently as 1967, Class I water (defined as drinkable after disinfection) existed in a third of Poland's rivers...
...By 1986, only 4 per cent of its entire river length was fit to drink...
...A study of children living in one such "hot spot" found increased rates of anemia and chromosome damage consistent with long-term poisoning...
...Not surprisingly, life expectancies in Central European countries are lower than in almost any other industrial nation outside the former Soviet Union...
...Power stations burning the brown, low-grade local coal known as lignite—the sole abundant fuel source indigenous to Central Europe, which yields only about half the energy per weight of black coal —have saturated the landscape with sulfur dioxide...
...Only after dispatching a Cabinet minister to investigate the pipeline shutoff did Warsaw learn of Moscow's desire to sweeten the deal...
...The insecurity of national energy supplies is widely recognized as a central cause of these problems...
...To make matters worse, obsolete technology, especially in the power, mining, chemical, and fertilizer sectors, releases toxins at levels substantially beyond those allowable in the West...
...Because increased gas consumption in the region would mean a considerable reduction of poisonous coal by-products, requests for financial assistance are being received with great sympathy in the West...
...For years the country's gas needs—particularly those of its antiquated heavy industries —have been met chiefly by Russia through the Siberian pipeline...
...Warsaw's three-year scheme envisions the installation of a gas line from the North Sea production fields along the bottom of the Baltic to the Polish port of Swinoujscie, via the southern Swedish town of Ystad...
...These countries will require aid, however, to construct the necessary pipelines...
...If the government has its way, that will change in the near future...
...All the energy-deficient former Communist nations of Central and Eastern Europe are looking for ways to escape from their dependence on Russia...
...Forest surveys conducted in 1989 showed a dramatic rise in defoliation across Central Europe...
...Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia would like to import gas from Norway too...
...And environment-conscious Sweden —among the worst hit by decades of Central European acid rain—is one of Poland's best bets for added technical and funding assistance...
...Nuclear power could provide a substitute, but the Polish electorate has flatly rejected it...
...Power stations burning high-sulfur local coal are blamed for the acid rain that has devastated lakes and forests across much of the Continent...
...But fuel resources are utilized poorly: Subsidies and an inadequate pricing system are responsible for high domestic energy expenditures relative to output, pushing up costs at home and limiting the availability of coal for export...
...To be sure, work toward that goal has been initiated...
...But for the present, Poland remains wholly dependent on the pipeline network set up by the defunct Comecon trade organization to link members of the Warsaw Pact...
...But a series of major economic and political crises provoked by Russia's abrupt decision to turn off the tap last winter has convinced the government here that it needs to find an alternative—and in a hurry...
...The relatively low exhaust emissions of natural gas make it far more environment-friendly: It produces only one third to one fourth the carbon dioxide levels of coal, and about half those of oil...
...Indeed, it is still?however grudgingly—the biggest importer of Russian natural gas...
...Under their auspices, both untapped and existing gas fields are being evaluated, developed and rehabilitated...
...The environment has paid a terrible price for Poland's industrial habits...
...The testing of the river system, though, offers perhaps the most striking evidence of environmental deterioration here...
Vol. 76 • July 1993 • No. 9
