MOSCOW, June 15. /TASS/. Volunteers of the Clean Arctic public environmental project, together with the Arktikugol Trust Compnay, are cleaning the northern village of Piramida, located on the Spitsbergen archipelago. They prepared for transportation to the mainland for further processing the first 30 tons of scrap metal collected in the mining town, the project's press service said.
"Spitsbergen is a place with special rules due to its status. Our environmental mission demonstrates that Russia's presence in the archipelago is not only about coal and tourists, it is also about true responsibility for the territory. The scrap metal that the Clean Arctic volunteers have collected will be transported to the mainland for further processing," the press service quoted the Clean Arctic public environmental project's leader Andrey Nagibin as saying.
The Piramida settlement on the Spitsbergen archipelago was mothballed in 1998 as coal mining stopped there due to a lack of profit, to falling coal prices, rising costs and underground fires. However, the housing stock and infrastructures were preserved. For the recent 20 years, Arktikugol has been developing tourism there. Piramida, in fact, is an open-air museum of the Soviet era.
