Residents of Zakamensk were left baffled when the water of the Modonkul river turned toxic orange on June 11, 2019.
So what’s behind this weird phenomenon?
About 10 days after water turned purple in Coal Grove, Ohio, residents of Zakamensk, in the republic of Buryatia, Russia, woke up to find that the water of their river, the Modonkul River, had turned bright orange.
The reason for the change of water colour is reportedly the river’s contamination by heavy metals cadmium and manganese after a leak in a local abandoned industrial complex.
The Buryatia authorities are now working to locate the place of the leakage.
River Modonkul flows into Dzhida river, which is a tributary of a larger River Selenga, which, in its turn, flows into Lake Baikal.
Lake Baikal is the largest freshwater lake by volume in the world and contains more water than the North American Great Lakes combined. With a maximum depth of 1,642 m (5,387 ft), Baikal is also the world’s deepest lake and is considered among the world’s clearest and the world’s oldest lake.
So imagine that catastrophe if this orange pollution would end up in the seventh largest lake around the world. The mystery green slime would probably grow more rapidly.
[Ruptly]
