OJAI : Environmentalists Plan Trip to Russia

Ojai environmental scientist David Guggenheim will lead a delegation to Russia and two Baltic states next month to teach those countries how to clean their fouled environments in a free-market economy.

The challenge, Guggenheim said Monday, is that the former Soviet Union countries have massive pollution, little money to clean it up and fledgling free markets.

“The idea is not to go in and try to change the world all in one breath, but to share information,” Guggenheim said. He is vice president of EcoAnalysis Inc. of Ojai, a consulting firm that analyzes and manages environmental programs.

Guggenheim’s 12-member delegation from around the country includes representatives of Xerox, AT&T;, universities and regulatory agencies. The group will spend 23 days in Russia, Latvia and Estonia. The trip is sponsored by People to People International, a private, nonprofit organization that fosters links between the United States and former Communist countries.

Guggenheim, who visited Russia last year on a similar trip, said the environmental challenges are daunting.

He said the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, in which a nuclear reactor blew up and spewed radioactive debris across Europe, is only the most well-known of hundreds of environmental disasters. Half of all rivers in the former Soviet Union are polluted beyond permissible limits. After World War II, Soviets dumped 300,000 tons of Nazi chemical weapons into the Baltic Sea.

“What’s really scary is that the information about a lot of these toxic dump sites isn’t known. Thirty, 40, 50 years of misinformation and disinformation have really created a frightening problem,” Guggenheim said.

The profound political and economic changes “have all but paralyzed environmental progress” in the former Soviet Union, he said, because the aging and polluting factories provide critical jobs to the region, Guggenheim said.

Michael Lehan, an official with People to People, said the group will meet with Russian industrialists who will take on more responsibility for environmental management under a free-market economy.

“We’re bringing a real-world perspective in our system to some of the new managers who will be making this system work,” Lehan said.