An “ecological board” will be installed near Yasnaya Polyana

The problem of the Yasnaya Polyana museum-estate, a pearl of not only cultural, but also natural landscape, a pearl of world significance, has long worried writers and ecologists around the world. After all, very close to Tolstoy’s estate, within sight, are the pipes of a chemical giant, the Shchekino Chemical Plant, a number of whose production facilities are associated with toxic substances that can enter the surrounding atmosphere. Residents of the nearby village of Pervomaisky, which was long ago removed from the “Chernobyl zone”, so as not to “scare away foreign tourists from Yasnaya Polyana,” are also worried.

Now there's one more piece of news. Shchekino itself, according to people, the government, for the same reasons, plans to remove from January 1 next year the categories of areas that suffered from the terrible consequences of the environmental Chernobyl disaster. A crowded meeting has already taken place in Shchekin with the participation of representatives of the regional administration, who assured the townspeople that they had not received any documents regarding the removal of Shchekin from the list of “contaminated territories.”

Meanwhile, the head of the region, Vladimir Gruzdev, proposed that the management of the chemical enterprise install an electronic display on which everyone could see on-line how much harmful substances are in the atmosphere (if any) and whether their volume exceeds the MPC (maximum permissible concentration) .

And State Duma deputy from the Tula region, member of the Committee on Natural Resources, Environmental Management and Ecology Oleg Lebedev proposed installing similar monitors near ALL potentially hazardous industries in the Tula region (in Efremov, Novomoskovsk, Shchekin). The proposal was received with interest. However, these are plans for now. We will monitor their implementation.