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Russia: Sakhalin II

The construction of the Liquid Natural Gas plant
(a part of the Sakhalin II Project)
and its negative impacts upon the local infrastructure as well as the inhabitants of the town of Korsakov

December 4, 2004

This article was prepared by Lina Lazebnik, a teacher at the Korsakov Middle School No. 2, and a member of a local grass-roots group of citizens known as “Knowledge is Strength”. Assistance with this article was provided by Dmitry Lisitsyn, the head of the NGO known as Sakhalin Environmental Watch.

This is a translation to English from the original Russian.

In many ways, the problems we are seeing here derive from the fact that the Sakhalin Energy Company did not do the baseline work that it needed to ahead of time. It didn't create the appropriate conditions for the Sakhalin II project to really get established. For this reason, all the stress and strain that was felt at the very beginning of construction was to fall on the shoulders of the local people, and upon the local officials and the town itself. Another basic reason for the immense social impact here was the fact that there was no individual attention paid to the impending social problems here by anyone amongst the contractors or subcontractors-- the very people who should have had an interest in what was happening. All this time Sakhalin Energy has been entering into contracts with dozens of other companies. But the main issue for the management teams here is to minimize expenses at each stage of fulfilling their contracts. This means that the management folks are really only trying to save money at every step of the game.

***

At the very early stages of construction (that is, from August to December of 2003), there were about 1,500 workers who descended upon the town of Korsakov--living there for a year, either in the town itself or in one of the small villages nearby. These imported workers became inhabitants of the town, paying no taxes, and availing themselves of all the social services and infrastructures during this entire time. And despite all the bonuses and the investments into the development of Sakhalin which the Sakhalin Energy folks like to boast about, the local government budgets have ended up running very large deficits over the last two years. There were simply not enough social-support resources to go around, even for the long-term residents of the town. What's more, the government budgets here have no way to withstand the influx of yet another 1,500 people (by the fall of 2004 the number of imported workers here had increased to nearly 3,000).

Because of the complete lack of preparation for the conditions that might arise, the appearance of such a large number of new people (i.e., the construction workers for the Liquid Natural Gas, or LNG plant) has caused:

• a decline in the overall water supply system for the city;
• a decline in the sanitary system that disposes of all industrial and domestic wastes;
• a serious increase in the overload on medical services in the town, services which are fully provided for by the local government budgets, and which include the hospital, local clinics, and ongoing ambulance services;
• a serious increase in the incidence of epidemic illnesses in the region;
• a serious increase in the amount of violent crimes committed against the local residents by the newcomers.

The local reservoirs have not been able to provide enough water for Korsakov for several years now. The water pipeline system here is quite old as well, and has not been repaired or updated for at least ten years now. There is systematic rationing of water now, with water turned on for three hours in the morning and three hours in the evening. Even then, in several parts of the town it is quite common for the water to be turned off anywhere from several days at a time to almost a month.

And now the situation is becoming even less fortuitous, since Sakhalin Energy decided to lay one of its oil pipelines right through a small watershed where water is collected [for the city reservoir]. This has ruined the topsoil near the rivers and streams here, especially in some of the steeper parts of the watershed, leading to a lot of soil runoff and sediment pollution in the reservoirs that serve as the source of public water. The local authorities were even forced to stop using them. Local experts now predict that "…..Korsakov might be without water for the entire winter." In sum, the appearance of 1,500 new residents in the town who are working on the plant has really caused a sharp increase in the demand for water--while, on the other hand, the oil pipeline that was laid by Sakhalin II has put two of the reservoirs out of commission, removing about 40% of all the water that once was used on a daily basis by the town.

The sanitation system here, which also has not been repaired or updated for more than ten years, really cannot manage to treat the waste waters that come from Korsakov at this point. As a result, a very significant amount of untreated water is now being dumped into the sea here. Moreover, the growth in local population did not bring in any improvements in the treatment facilities. For the last year, Sakhalin Energy has been sending its waste waters from the LNG plant site to the existing treatment centre for Korsakov. And once they had managed to overload this system, they began to send their waste waters to the treatment plants in the neighbouring villages of Dachnoe and Solovyovka, where the local systems are extremely old and close to a complete and dangerous breakdown. This method of dealing with the problem continued right up to October 2004, that is, until a new treatment centre began to take on the waste waters in the new village that was set up for the construction workers in Prigorod.

***

One should note that the construction workers who were brought here hail from many different countries, such as Turkey, Pakistan, Kirgyzia, Uzbekistan, Moldova, Ukraine, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, as well as from many other cities from all over Russia. They brought with them their own diseases and infections, including more than a few venereal cases. There are a number of rather exotic illnesses that have appeared here. The local Korsakov physicians have no experience [with these] and are not sure how to treat them. Already there are cases of AIDs. There are also a number of new cases of tuberculosis and pediculosis [lice]. Official statistics show that, in the time immediately after construction of the LNG plant began, the number of people in the town suffering from pneumonia rose precipitously. And this is not your run-of-the-mill type of pneumonia. What is really unusual is that local people are coming down with pneumonia year-round now, and not just during the short season that once was the rule.

For the most part, the construction workers at the plant have no medical coverage at all. And despite all their efforts, the medical teams already serving Korsakov have not been able to force the contractors at the plant to cover the medical costs for those suffering from venereal diseases or AIDs, as is required by Russian law. And insofar as some 1,500 workers have been living in and around the town of Korsakov for over a year now (and many still live there now), one way or another there has been no end of contact with the local residents. This has led to the spread of many diseases and to a growing overload for the hospital here, which had a hard enough time taking care of the existing health problems for the local people before.

The problem here really comes down to the fact that a very large number of the workers here have no medical policies. Correspondingly, the people who are employing them have not been paying for any of the medical services that are provided by the local health care system. In the vast majority of cases, the Korsakov medical teams have been forced to render services for free to all the workers at the LNG plant-- not only in cases of severe illnesses but also in cases where ambulance services were required. This has meant ultimately that the local people have had to pay for these services, since every one of them is covered by their own local employers, who pay fees for the public medical insurance policies that support the local health care budget, which in turn goes to pay for all medical services in the region.

A good example of what is happening is an incident that took place at the beginning of 2004 in the Korsakov hospital. A plant worker was brought in after he had gotten into a drunken brawl and injured his eye. As it turned out, the hospital had to spend the equivalent of 120 thousand rubles [about USD $4,275] on his treatment. For three months the doctors requested that his employers pay for the treatment. But, in the end, the company refused to pay anything.

This is not an unusual case at all: there are many such incidents to cite. This is a town where an LNG plant is being built, where around 5,000 people now live-- and there is only one small health care center that can provide primary care. In other words, we aren't talking here about a place with large-scale medical facilities. What this all means is that any serious outbreak or other health problems among the workers could easily become a tremendous burden upon the Korsakov medical staff. By Russian standards, a town with around 5,000 people should have a functioning hospital with several dozen doctors, each with their own specialization. There should be high-tech equipment available, with in-patient facilities that can house a few dozen patients at least.

Another incident happened in March of this year, when there was a case of massive poisoning at one of the larger subcontracting groups, known as the Amur Tiger Company. Some twenty-five people were brought into the Korsakov county hospital with a diagnosis of severe food poisoning. After research into the matter by the state public health officials, the cause of the poisoning became obvious. There had been numerous and severe violations of public health standards in the place where food was being prepared for the company workers. Many of the food products given to the workers had "use-by" dates that had long since past. And the food preparers themselves had not been subject to any kind of inspection, medical or otherwise. (In one case the chief cook was found to have a severe infection on his hand, with pus oozing out.) The foodstuffs were being stored in non-refrigerated areas, and food that had not been consumed the day before was simply served again the next day, etc. The office of the mayor of Korsakov estimates that the treatment alone for all those who came down with food poisoning would cost the county the equivalent of 15% of all the taxes and land-rental fees that the various LNG companies had paid into public coffers during the previous year.

Thereafter, the Korsakov medical teams tried to contact the companies that had been contracted to build the plant. However, by May of 2004, when the construction had already been going on for nine months, with a total of 2,000 workers taking part-- none of the companies at hand, neither the Sakhalin Energy Co., nor its general contractors at the Japanese company CTSD, nor even the subcontractors that had been brought in, had shown any willingness to set up any system or process for looking into the health of their own workers, including the vast majority who had come from outside Sakhalin Island to do the building work.

Now, the future operation of the LNG plant also carries with it the threat of many serious accidents (the recent disaster at an LNG plant in Algeria shows how a large explosion can cause a very serious fire). Both the physicians and the local government agencies here have already approached the CTSD Ltd. Co. with the proposal that they take into account the possibility that there might be a large number of casualties, should there be a serious accident at the plant. They proposed to the company that a special evacuation program be set up to deal with these potential casualties. That way, medical help could reach them quickly, and the patients could be placed in the medical facilities here without delay. However, even this proposal for cooperation was to be ignored by the builders of the plant.

Then, at the beginning of 2004, there was a bad automobile accident at the construction site. There were nine workers who were brought into the Korsakov hospital, with various traumas. This was just too large a number of people for them to be treated at one time. This means that, if the number of injured from some future accident runs into the tens or twenties, there simply is little chance for the Korsakov medical establishment to be able to deal with this on its own. That's why it is necessary to set up some reasonable response regime to deal with a possible large-scale accident in advance.

***

When a large portion of the work force had been living in the town itself, the living conditions that they experienced could hardly be called either civilized or humane. The various large and small sub-contracting companies-- most of whom came from off the island-- decided to place their workers in whatever sort of living quarters were available, at least to begin with. Sometimes the most unpractical living areas were provided-- one example is where they set up a number of beds in the open workshops located in the first buildings erected for the plant. They were reduced to setting apart the living area by hanging fishing nets.

In a few cases the number of workers living in one room of this sort reached as many as a hundred. There would be only one washing machine to serve all of them, two toilets and only one shower. Each worker was given an iron cot that was only 2.5 feet wide, with a top and bottom bunk, one mattress per worker, with one set of sheets that was supposed to last them several months at a time. There was no dryer in sight, or any way to dry the clothes and the linens that needed to be washed. And since these workers were working round the clock, they could go weeks without being able to dry any of their wash. And rainy days didn't see any letup in the work either.

The workers weren't able to work or live in anything approaching decent conditions. Even now the typical working period for most of the contracting companies goes from ten to fourteen hours a day, with only one or two days off each month. This despite the fact that-- during the negotiations that allowed Sakhalin Energy to build this plant in the first place-- the company was to promise that, from the very beginning of any construction work at the plant, they would first build a so-called "pioneer" [camp] village for the 1,500 workers that would be brought there. This promise turned out to be an empty one, and the construction of the plant went on simultaneously with the construction of possible living quarters for the workers.

The main reason that the contracting companies are bringing in so many workers from the mainland, by the way, especially from the former Soviet republics, is that they are doing everything they can to save money on salaries. In many cases they promise wages as high as $1,000 a month; but they never offer the worker a contract to sign. To get the hired workers to believe in these promises and come to Sakhalin in the first place, they usually give them an immediate advance of $1,500. But then it turns out that they have to work under very difficult conditions, for up to nine months or more, not earning any extra money while they pay back the advance. Many (about 1/3 of the imported workers) can't hold out, and return home, not having received any real salary during their stay. A lot of them are forced to leave because of some illness or injury that occurs here, insofar as the contracting companies are mostly not paying for any medical treatment.

The workers that come from the other former Soviet countries are willing to work for very low wages. They are now on foreign soil, and are not familiar with the local laws. They have no way of defending their own workers’ rights. For this reason it is quite easy to force them to work in the most difficult conditions, and pay them next to nothing for doing so. They are really fed and paid almost nothing. Workers from Sakhalin have the ability to hire a lawyer, and many of them are members of local unions. As locals, they know their own laws better, and they know that it's possible to go to the local attorney general's offices or go to the labor boards to protect their own rights. That's why it would have been much more challenging to deceive any workers who were locally based, and to force them to work for less money without adhering to any standard of working conditions.

So, the contracting companies here don't find it profitable to hire the local Sakhalin workers. For one thing, they would have to pay them more, plus it would be harder to manipulate them to make them work for longer hours than what is allowed by law. The Korsakov labor center statistics show that, during the last year-- out of the 4,500 local Sakhalin people who applied for a job by sending in their resumes to the companies building the plant-- only 172 of them have been hired.

A good many of the workers who came to work at the construction site in the fall of 2003 only received their first real wages at the end of June 2004; they only got paid then because of a visit paid by representatives from the EBRD, the US Ex-Im Bank, and the JBIC folks. During the meetings between these representatives and the local population of Korsakov, the problem of nonpayment of wages became clear to everyone. As a result there were a number of pointed comments made by these banking institutions to Sakhalin Energy. Before that, the workers were only fed, and, from time to time, they were given mere advances of only 2-3 thousand rubles [about USD $70- $100) for a month. The complete data on how much workers are actually getting paid has been held under very tight wraps. But because of investigations that were conducted by several Sakhalin journalists, it was learned that workers at the LNG construction site on average earn between 8 and 18 thousand rubles [about USD $285-$640] a month for non-stop 12-14 hour days. The earnings of workers from the former Soviet republics very rarely reaches 10 thousand rubles [about USD $360] a month; but this money is extremely hard for them to get their hands on, when it comes down to it.

***

The fact that no plan was made to handle all the additional heavy-vehicle traffic around the construction site has also caused a huge set of problems for the residents of Korsakov.

The town of Korsakov and all the fishing villages within Korsakov Region are connected by one dirt road that runs mostly along the shores of Aniva Bay. The LNG plant-- in Prigorod-- will be between these fishing villages and the town itself, which is about 12 kilometers away. There are thousands of people who use this road constantly. What's more, there are several villages and hundreds of dacha complexes [groups of small private cottages with subsistence gardens] that are situated along the road to the plant. A great number of the Korsakov locals, as well as many residents of the larger southern Sakhalin area, use this road to go out into the country to fish, hunt, gather wild mushrooms and berries, or simply to take a holiday on the sea. It is this very stretch of road between Korsakov and Prigorod that has come under the heaviest use by the huge construction trucks that pass by in the thousands.

One recalls how the Sakhalin Energy people made many promises during the negotiation and contract-signing stages of work here. They managed to tell the Korsakov county agencies, and the townspeople as well, that the main cargo loads destined for the construction site would be arrive via sea routes, and not land routes. They said that only during the very early stages, while they were building a special dock for unloading, would a small portion of the heavy loads be sent through the existing port of Korsakov-- and from there, through the town itself. However, today, after a full sixteen months of construction work, as many as 90% of the cargo loads that go to the site are arriving via the main streets of the heart of Korsakov itself. They barrel past the public schools and through residential areas. Then they head out along the Korsakov-Prigorod road, which still does not have any asphalt.

The promises made by Sakhalin Energy obviously have been impossible to fulfill, since even if the special loading docks had been built and put into use, this would take only a small portion of the truck traffic off the road. The largest part of the truckloads coming to the site are carrying building materials-- sand, gravel, and other quarried rocks for building. And these would not come through the port anyway, because they come from the island itself. There is no difference whether the loading dock in Prigorod is put to use or not. It really has no effect on how the building materials will be brought in. Most of the materials arrive from the mine and quarry sites located a few dozen kilometres north of Korsakov. From these sites there are only two possible routes of transportation:

1. The somewhat longer route, that goes right through the center of Korsakov. The main advantage of this for the truckers is that almost the entire route is well-paved, it being the main road to the southern tip of the island;

2. The main shortcut, which goes entirely along a dirt road, past the small village of Chapaevo. The main drawback to this route is that it is a dirt road that has been used for many years, and really is not appropriate for such heavy traffic, since it has always been in need of constant repair.

For the most part, the people who are building the plant prefer that the first route [through the town center]. It is, after all, the one that costs the least (there's no need to constantly repair the road, for example). But late last year, and even early in 2004, the other alternative was also used rather actively, as it is even today, since the dirt road has not completely been broken up into ruts and ravines. Both of these routes entail transport across a 12 kilometer section of dirt road that lies between Korsakov and Prigorod. It is only the second route [via Chapaevo] that does not bring truck traffic into the town of Korsakov itself, since it meets with the connecting road on the outskirts.

Sakhalin Energy was supposed to put forward a detailed plan for handling traffic before any work was to have started at the site. They were supposed to have taken these plans and presented them for approval by the county and Sakhalin Province authorities. It is interesting that the company spent several years previous discussing this very problem at various gatherings-- at which they gave a number of different promises, at times contradictory to each other. Yet, no plan of any kind for handling the transportation operations around the construction site was ever committed to paper. And no documents exist to show any work to this effect. Without a doubt, it would be in the interests of the region and the province to have the second [Chapaevo] route used for supplying building materials, requiring that capital improvements be made to this dirt road, to the point where it would be made to detour around the village of Chapaevo as well.

The authorities in Korsakov have tried to receive more information on the scale and nature of the truck traffic that travels the roads of their region. They want to be able to estimate the total load, and determine what measures should be taken to strengthen and improve the roads that are being used. But neither Sakhalin Energy, nor CTSD, nor any of the other subcontractors have given any response to the questions that have been posed to them on this subject. Only one of the contracting firms has managed to reply that, during the first year of construction, it was gauged that some 40,000 cubic meters of sand and about 60,000 cubic meters of crushed rock had been trucked across the Korsakov roads (for a total of about 180,000 metric tons transported).

At the time that construction started at the site, there had not been any signs of new road-building, and no efforts had been made at road improvement at all (with the exception of a few streets within Korsakov itself). The construction of the plant went on using the existing system of roads in situ. There had been absolutely no accounting for what the sharp increase in traffic would do.

So, with the increasingly intensive use of the roads, by the spring of 2004 it turned out that many sections of road were simply in ruins. The Sakhalin climate is quite damp. In springtime, during the thawing of the snows, a massive amount of water floods the land. Traffic along the dirt roads at this time (from March to June) is bound to have the most ruinous effect. This is why for many years the province authorities have only allowed a limited amount of heavy freight truck traffic along the dirt roads of the island. In essence, they allow heavy truck traffic during this time of impassable roads only by a system of special permits. However, as of the spring of 2004, the LNG plant builders had still been able to completely ignore these longstanding restrictions. Consequently, the dirt roads here, especially the Korsakov-Prigorod portion, were completely broken up and ruined.

The local traffic of privately-owned cars between Korsakov and the fishing villages of Ozerski, Beregovoe, and Novikovo, all along the Aniva Bay, was almost completely shut down during this period because of the state of the road. The enormous trucks had left such deep ruts in the road to the [LNG] plant that even an all-terrain jeep would have had trouble getting through. The detour towards the building site, which should have led traffic up to the site as early as the beginning of 2004, was still not open for operation (it only opened in the month of October, 2004). From the start of March right through April it was very difficult to supply locals with food or with any postal mail. Locals simply couldn't reach the central hospital either (there were even incidents where the ambulances got stuck in the awful roads here). No one could go out into the countryside at all; not even to visit relatives.

And so, in order to force Sakhalin Energy, and CTSD and the other subcontractors to do some repairs on the road, the local Korsakov officials held a "round table" for everyone to discuss the problem. However, not one of the companies responsible for building the plant sent any representatives to this meeting. That’s when the mayor called for the local citizens to get out and picket the road in the region around Prigorod. They did manage to stop truck traffic in its tracks for several hours. But even with this, no representatives from Sakhalin Energy or from CTSD were willing to come forward into a dialogue with the local residents and their elected officials. It was only after the local press started writing about the alarming situation that the province-level officials started to exert some pressure on both companies-- at which time they started to take some action to repair the road.

The same situation arose around the road running through Chapaevo. This road was at first used for transporting sand and hard rock materials. The heavy loads that came through eventually completely destroyed the road, leaving the local residents totally isolated from the outside world. One could pass over this road only in trucks with very high undercarriage clearance. It was here that the locals were able to force some repairs of the road, but only by setting up pickets and blocking trucks from passing. More than a few residents of the larger Korsakov region were forced to repair their cars after the beating they took from driving across these terrible roads.

CTSD and Sakhalin Energy had agreed to pay USD $2 million to the Korsakov County coffers, of which three-hundred thousand was supposed to cover or compensate for the needed repair and rebuilding of roads here. However, by the estimate of independent experts, it would take no less than USD $7 million to give full compensation for all the damage and other negative impacts to the roads and road traffic of the region (which itself does not include all the losses incurred by local businesses and by private people as they went about their business).

***

The town residents are having trouble dealing with the truck traffic.

Before the construction at the site started, Sakhalin Energy and CTSD had agreed to widen and otherwise improve the thoroughfares, so as to provide for truck transport along the streets of Korsakov. However, they managed to do this by getting rid of the sidewalks for pedestrians. As a result, pedestrians in the town are now in a lot more danger. Already one of the town's residents walking along the truck routes through the center was hit by a bus that was carrying workers to the LNG plant. Her suit is now in court.

The truck routes here pass through a number of residential areas. In some cases the road with all these trucks runs only a matter of 10-15 meters from the front doors of these houses. This causes a lot of inconvenience for the locals, mostly from the incessant noise, and the dust and dirt that is kicked up. For the first few months of construction the trucks were roaring by even at night. There are houses here which shake strongly with the passing of each truck, rattling the dishes, shaking everything. The air quality has gotten a great deal worse along the truck routes, mostly from the exhaust that comes from each truck. Also, the middle school in Korsakov has suffered some impact, since truck traffic streams right past it. In front of the school are two of the most dangerous intersections in town. Now each student has to have a teacher accompany him or her to cross the street both before and after school. And the classrooms have become incredibly stuffy and uncomfortable, since the windows have to be closed at all times to keep out the dust and air pollution that can even make it impossible for the kids to breathe.

The kids themselves decided to start monitoring all the truck traffic in front of their school, and found that each school day some 150 trucks passed by en route to the LNG plant site (this did not include other trucks or other heavy traffic). There's a stoplight right in front of the school, which means that many trucks just stand there idling, with traffic often backing up. So as to avoid this backup, the trucks from the LNG plant often drive right across the square that is in front of the school, even during the time in between classes when the kids are out on the street. This still happens all the time, forcing the school administration to erect a concrete barrier in front of the school.

In the spring of 2004, when the roads were blocked up with the thawing snows, the trucks that came through town began to track an immense amount of dirt and mud into town. The streets in town were covered in layers of mud. When they dried in summer, they turned into massive dirt and dust piles. The city officials in charge of the roads in Korsakov tried to force the drivers and their bosses to start cleaning their trucks-- but nothing came of it. When the local police inspectors started to fine the drivers as they passed through town, the drivers just turned around and washed their trucks in some of the spawning streams near town. There has been no plan put forward to set up a truck wash at the plant.

Before all this started, the sight of a heavy truck on any of Korsakov's streets was a rare thing indeed. The local people had no idea that all the construction going on over there in Prigorod would bring them so much trouble.

***

The builders of the LNG plant are ignoring all the requirements set down by law concerning compensation for polluting the environment.

In accordance with the federal law on “Protecting the Environment”, every business enterprise that might cause pollutants to enter the atmosphere during operations, or that contaminates the water or soil around it, must set aside a special fee to pay for having caused this pollution, a payment which goes to the federal, regional, and local state budgets. The greater the volume of pollution, the larger the payment to be made. This standard of operation pertains even to the use of private automobiles.

Nevertheless, the business contractors at hand here-- such as: BAM Mechanical Construction, Far East Mechanical Construction, Rosneft Resources, Moscow Electrical Line Construction, Tiger Amur, and Angarsk Construction Management-- not to mention the Japanese CTSD Corporation and IKEM-- all have been conducting work here without making a single payment of this nature. The State Environmental Inspectors have checked into this a number of times, and have each time revealed a complete absence of any documentation that would allow these companies to use the natural resources here (these documents should be set up to show the limits to the amount of waste that can be produced at the site, or how this waste must be handled; it also sets limits to the amount of pollution that may be released into the atmosphere, as well as how much in the way of other pollution may be allowed in the local natural environment).

This all means that the companies are getting away without taking care of any fines or other payments for polluting the environment here. Thanks to this trickery, the plant builders here have been able to save a ton of money, while the state budget coffers at all levels are not getting their fair share of payments. Even today, after a number of attempts at sanctioning these companies, a few of them are still avoiding payment, and have yet to submit the appropriate licensing documents that would set them up to pay compensation for the pollution they release.

***

The Korsakov residents are also losing one of the best beach sites in the region, with very little in the way of compensation proposed-- thanks to the construction of this LNG plant.

At the very site where the plant is being built, there is a fine sandy beach that has been popular for many years among the local residents. This beach once provided all kinds of valuable opportunities for enjoyment:

• It is here that one can both swim and sunbathe for a good part of the warm season. In fact, this is about the only place in the Korsakov region that is suitable for swimming, since nearer to the town itself the water has been seriously polluted by other industries and by the release of municipal wastes. Many of the poorer children who couldn’t be sent to camps by their parents would often spend most of their summers on this one good beach.
• In addition, this beach is noted for some of the best sport fishing in the region, with a number of species of salmon and others to be caught here.
• One type of salmon uses tidepools here to spawn, after which many local people would gather the mature fish in buckets.
• After good storms, the local people would also be able to go out and gather a number of shell fish, which would have washed up on shore.
• There are also small groups of fishermen who are licensed to catch the salmon here, coming in from all over southern Sakhalin.

In sum, the significance of this beach to the tens of thousands of local residents who use it would be hard to overestimate.

The beach itself occupies a strip of shoreline that is about 2,400 meters long (about 1.5 miles). Of this amount, some 800 meters was set aside for the plant itself, just to the east of mouth of the Merey River. This area is already out-of-bounds for local residents. Along this stretch of beach a protected dock is being built, for offloading equipment. Another dock is being built here for shipping cargo, alongside the fuel pipeline that will run out into the sea to a special offshore facility for exports.

The CTSD and Sakhalin Energy companies came up with an assessed value for these 800 meters of beach that amounted to USD $800,000-- which comes to $1,000 per meter of beachfront property. The beach here averages about 15 meters in width, so the price put on this land was about $1,000 per 15 square meters. How this compensatory sum was reached, and whose imagination was used to reach it, is a mystery to us all. This money has already been handed over to the town, although it quickly became evident that this would somehow not really compensate for the loss of the beach. You couldn’t even use this money to build a decent swimming pool in the town, which has been a dream of the local residents for years. It wouldn’t be enough to pay for rebuilding the bridges that lead across the Aniva inlet to some of the other similar beaches that are recreational favorites of the people from southern Sakhalin. You wouldn’t have enough money either to build up a new beach to the north of town, where the water is fairly polluted anyway. For this reason, it was decided to use the money to rebuild the city park. But even here, once work on this began, it became quite clear that this money would only go as far as paying for the design and other digging and preparatory work for the park.

Sakhalin Energy had promised to leave the remaining 1,600 meters of beach untouched for use by the local population. It was stated over and over again, in no uncertain terms (including in all the planning documents for construction) that this beach would not be affected by the construction work here, and that people could continue to enjoy fishing and other recreational activities here. But, as it turned out, the so-called "public health zone ” around the plant is now slated to stretch out some 3.5 kilometres. And this means that the entire beach will be encompassed within the overall territory of the plant.

By the current laws in Russia concerning the protection of public health, these off-limit zones cannot allow for the construction of any hazardous industries in an area also used for public recreation. This means that the folks at Prigorod cannot be allowed to use this beach at all. What’s more, CTSD Ltd. has already prepared a project to build up a road here that will run right along the beachfront. They know that the strong ocean currents could be a problem. So, as part of their project plans, the company intends to build a rock barrier right along the beach, between the road and the high tide level of the beach. There’s no doubt that this kind of barrier will result in the disappearance of the beach itself. Nevertheless, not a word has been spoken about how the town might be compensated for the loss of the remaining 1,600 meters of beachfront property.

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This is but a spare list of all the problems that are emerging here, thanks to the construction of this now controversial LNG plant. We have said nothing here about the larger environmental impacts on the fisheries here, by the way. Nor do we mention the arrogant and offensive manner in which the managers of these Western companies have been treating the Russian workers at the site. There’s also the matter of how the Sakhalin newspapers have been all bought off by Sakhalin Energy, so that for a certain amount of money they are willing to print only the most positive materials about the construction of the plant here. And how about how so many of the small farmers and dacha owners who have been forced off their land? Or the crime wave that has hit the region around the construction site itself?

There is much that remains hidden from our view as well, since Sakhalin Energy seems to like to operate “behind closed doors” at all times. They have a very strict regime for controlling all the information they hold. They keep a tight air of secretiveness in any case where there might be a hint of negative news about their operations. They show no tolerance for any kind of criticism at all either. But, because of all these problems that we've begun to list here, the local people are starting to look at the LNG plant with more and more antipathy and aggression.