2003 — Ecological expedition along the Vyazma river

COMPLEX ECOLOGICAL INSPECTION OF THE DNIEPER’S LEFT CONFLUENT — THE VYAZMA RIVER

Date: July 25 — August 4, 2003
Route: the Vyazma river — from the source up to the mouth

Expedition’s goal

Increasing the awareness of people about condition of the Dnieper river in Smolensk region; attracting attention of people and power structures to necessity to make particular acts for solving the ecological problems with the help of following:

• organizing the ecological expedition along the Vyazma river, from its source up to the mouth,
• realization the nature-conservative measures in practice,
• making the educational and informational materials,
• realization the attendant informational measures.

During the ecological expedition along the Vyazma river the following specific targets were solved:

• exploring the ecological condition of the Vyazma river along the route of the expedition,
• revealing the depth of the river pollution within the precincts of Vyazma town and out of it,
• exploring the ecological condition in the basin of the Vyazma river and its water protection zone,
• exploring the present-day use of the river in recreation, practical, common and other purposes; definition the outlook of using the river in these directions,
• definition the camping potential of the Vyazma river at all and on its different parts.

During the expedition the following nature-conservative measures had been done:

• popularization the ecological knowledge and culture in the inhabited localities along the expedition’s route,
• photographing the most attractive places,
• video filming the educational film.

Children, students and teachers from Smolensk took part in the expedition. Leaders of the expedition:

• Sergey Suhoruchenkov, the chief of the Viking-Nevo club,
• Victor Shkalikov, the associate professor of the Smolensk Teacher’s Training University.

The expeditionary explorations let to find out following aspects of ecological conditions of the Vyazma river:

1. The depth of the river pollution from the Vyazma town drainages is rather sizeable and continues to grow up because of bad work of the town treatment plants, expanding the contaminants on the factories (especially on the tannery), and worsening the sanitary state of the town territory.
2. Sizeable river pollution extends on about one third of its length and becomes invisible after one half.
3. Improvement of the river’s cleanability is caused by intensive overgrowing with the water growth and absence of agricultural pollutants which functioned earlier.
4. The river’s fauna gets the serious damage from uncontrolled poaching and especially because of electric rods using.
5. The river doesn’t lose its recreation potential downstream, and new houses are building up intensive in some village.