It's been snowing in Siberia. But instead of waking to a white winter wonderland, residents in Russia's coal basin are living through a dark, industrial nightmare.
It's been snowing in Siberia. But instead of waking to a white winter wonderland, residents in Russia's coal basin are living through a dark, industrial nightmare.
Three separate cities within the coal-mining region of Kemerovo in southwest Siberia have been blanketed in a thick, black deluge of toxic snow, polluted by ever-present coal dust that pervades the atmosphere – and now the surface, too.
"There is a lot of coal dust in the air all the time," Vladimir Slivyak, the co-chair of Russian environmental advocacy group Ecodefense, told The Guardian.
"When snow falls, it just becomes visible. You can't see it the rest of the year, but it is still there."
In grim scenes uploaded to social networks and described as "post-apocalyptic" by Russian media, Siberian residents in the cities of Prokopyevsk, Kiselyovsk, and Leninsk-Kuznetsky have shared images of their soiled, shadowy landscape – prompting at least one Twitter user to ask, "Is this what snow looks like in hell?"
Even more bizarrely, in an alleged cover-up of how bad the problem is, footage on YouTube from December reveals a snow slide painted with white paint outside a recreation centre in the town of Mysky, in an apparent attempt to conceal the grimy black snowpack underneath.
Those responsible for painting over the black snow have reportedly been reprimanded, and the paint was ordered to be removed – but the coal dust responsible for the black snow in the first place can't be remedied quite so easily.
The Kuznetsk Basin, covering an area of approximately 70,000 square kilometres (27,000 square miles), is one of the largest coal mining areas in the world, responsible for about 60 percent of Russia's total coal production, much of which is exported.
But for local cities living in the dusty shadow of open-pit mines, preparation plants, and coal stockpiles, there's a huge environmental price to be paid for the proximity.
Three separate cities within the coal-mining region of Kemerovo in southwest Siberia have been blanketed in a thick, black deluge of toxic snow, polluted by ever-present coal dust that pervades the atmosphere – and now the surface, too.
"There is a lot of coal dust in the air all the time," Vladimir Slivyak, the co-chair of Russian environmental advocacy group Ecodefense, told The Guardian.
"When snow falls, it just becomes visible. You can't see it the rest of the year, but it is still there."
In grim scenes uploaded to social networks and described as "post-apocalyptic" by Russian media, Siberian residents in the cities of Prokopyevsk, Kiselyovsk, and Leninsk-Kuznetsky have shared images of their soiled, shadowy landscape – prompting at least one Twitter user to ask, "Is this what snow looks like in hell?"
Even more bizarrely, in an alleged cover-up of how bad the problem is, footage on YouTube from December reveals a snow slide painted with white paint outside a recreation centre in the town of Mysky, in an apparent attempt to conceal the grimy black snowpack underneath.
Those responsible for painting over the black snow have reportedly been reprimanded, and the paint was ordered to be removed – but the coal dust responsible for the black snow in the first place can't be remedied quite so easily.
The Kuznetsk Basin, covering an area of approximately 70,000 square kilometres (27,000 square miles), is one of the largest coal mining areas in the world, responsible for about 60 percent of Russia's total coal production, much of which is exported.
But for local cities living in the dusty shadow of open-pit mines, preparation plants, and coal stockpiles, there's a huge environmental price to be paid for the proximity.