Authorities kept buying trips to children’s camps near Tuapse despite the city’s environmental disaster

Authorities continued buying trips to children’s camps near Tuapse despite the environmental disaster in the city

After a fire at the oil-loading terminal in Tuapse and an oil spill in the Black Sea, the authorities signed new contracts to buy trips for children to the region and did not cancel old ones, Verstka found after studying data from the public procurement website.

Since April 16 alone, the authorities have signed three contracts totaling almost 33 million rubles. The Norilsk administration bought 105 trips to the Zvezdochka children’s residence in Dzhubga (58 km from Tuapse), and another 135 trips to an unnamed children’s camp in the Tuapse district. Another 24 trips to the Solnechny Bereg children’s camp in Lermontovo (49 km from Tuapse) were purchased by the administration of the Sovetsky district of the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug (KhMAO).

After the refinery fires and the oil spill, government agencies also continued announcing new auctions to find suppliers of children’s trips. Voronezh State University plans to buy 250 student vouchers for a health facility located no more than 40 km from Tuapse for 17 million rubles.

At the same time, the children’s camps and sanatoriums themselves, located north of Tuapse, are trying to convince potential clients that the environmental disaster in the city has not affected, and will not affect, their operations in any way. Verstka found several such posts on their social media.

For example, a children’s camp at the Belaya Rus sanatorium, located 20 km from Tuapse, published a video about the safety of staying at its center. And the Orlyonok federal children’s center posted a short video from the beach featuring a participant in the current session, who asked parents not to worry about them.

Meanwhile, as the satellite imagery analysis project Transparent World writes, the spill area ranges from 0.4 to 3.8 square kilometers, and more than half a kilometer of Tuapse’s central beach has already been polluted. Transparent World noted that there is a risk of oil washing ashore on the beaches of Agoy, Nebug, Olginka, and even Novomikhailovsky, where the Orlyonok federal children’s center is located.

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