Kazakhstan’s Black Snow

Temirtau is a city located in the northeast corner of Kazakhstan’s central Karaganda Region, about 140 miles from Astana. As winter settles in on the steppe temperatures plunge – the average daily high between late November and early March is just 26 degrees Fahrenheit – and sometimes it snows.

This year snow blanketed Temirtau in the first week of January, but something was wrong. The snow was black.

The dust that settled atop the city’s snow resembled the coal the Karaganda region is famous for. In the 1940s, the Soviet Union decided to construct a steel mill in Temirtau. Kazakhstan’s largest steel production plant – the Karaganda Metallurgical Combine – began operations in the 1970s. The combine is owned by ArcelorMittal Temirtau, a subsidiary of ArcelorMittal, a global industrial giant.

Residents of Temirtau, watching their children play in black snow and understandably disturbed, shared pictures and video on Instagram and other social media sites; many pointed to the steel plant as the culprit.

As the BBC reported, some residents collected signatures for a petition addressed to Aliya Nazarbayeva, the head of the Association of Ecological Organizations of Kazakhstan and also the youngest daughter of President Nursultan Nazarbayev.

"The snow acts as a litmus test, revealing the frightening scale of these harmful emissions," the letter said. "All that dust from the plant ends up in our lungs, and in the lungs of our kids."

ArcelorMittal Temirtau did not deny that pollution from its plants may have played a role in the black snow incident. The company acknowledged in a press release that in December there had been no wind and “[in such conditions] emissions do not dissipate and this most likely caused the change of the snow's color.”

The press release went on to note that solving the environmental problem “is a long-term project,” Ideally, ArcelorMittal Temirtau’s release said, facilities like the steel plant should be located away from settlements. “But the reality is that the city and the metallurgical plant were built very close to each other,” it concluded.

Across Central Asia, the herald of the modern age – industrialization – and the legacies of the Soviet Union have irreparably impacted the region’s environment and threaten the quality of life for its growing population. Meanwhile, climate change exacerbates some of the region’s environmental ills.

Industrialize, De-Industrialize, Re-Industrialize

Industrialization does not have to be a linear process. The ebbs and flows of politics and prices can turn company towns into ghost towns and also breathe new life into once-dead cities. Temirtau, and Karaganda writ large, are a prime example of the ups and downs of the industrialization and urbanization process in Kazakhstan.

In 2013, the Center for Economic Research (CER) in Tashkent, Uzbekistan completed a study of urbanization in Central Asia. The report focused on exploring the process of urbanization in the region. During the Soviet period new cities were created in Central Asia specifically to serve the Soviet Union’s national economic priorities. After independence, the primarily agrarian economies of the region experienced a decline in urbanization until their own economies transitioned more fully, resulting in the growth of cities once more.

Alongside this urbanization, industrialization occured. In particular, both phenomena were boosted during World War II when the Soviet Union – threatened on its European front by Nazi Germany – evacuated industrial operations to the USSR’s interior. According to the CER report, “Between 1941 and 1943, 142 enterprises were relocated to Kazakhstan, 30 to Kyrgyzstan, and 109 to Uzbekistan.”

The founding of Temirtau’s first steel mill fits into this period.

Karaganda also hosted a network of prison camps, known collectively as the Karaganda Corrective Labor Camp, or KarLag. Prisoners of war and undesirable deportees – like the Koreans ejected from the Far East and the Germans removed from European Russia – worked in the region’s industries.

The focus on extractive industries in Kazakhstan, the CER report noted, resulted in the region’s highest rates of urbanization. Kazakhstan’s urban population grew from 43.7 percent in 1959 to 57.1 percent by 1989. This urbanization was driven by the creation of industrial areas. In the six years between 1939 and 1945, Kazakhstan added 10 cities and 47 urban-type settlements, according to official data.

After 1991, the CER report notes, “many urban settlements in Central Asia underwent a decline in economic activity.” Cities in Kazakhstan first experienced sharp decline in socioeconomic development, driven in part by de-population as ethnic Russians, Germans, and others left the newly independent country. Then these same cities experienced a boom, as prices for raw materials – like Karaganda’s coal – soared.

The cities the Soviet Union built remain and modern Kazakhstan has to deal with the environmental impacts of those company towns. Temirtau’s black snow is, in a way, part of its Soviet legacy.

The Fallout of Kazakhstan’s Other Legacies

Just as there are other kinds of company towns beyond coal and steel, there are other environmental legacies of the Soviet Union beyond Temirtau’s black snow.

The best known is the Aral Sea, or what puddles remain of it. Once the world’s fourth largest lake, scientists believe it began to shrink long before the Soviets began implementing massive irrigation schemes across the region in 1960. But after 1960, the lake’s fluctuations in volume tumbled into a freefall, with the lake’s source waters diverted into ditches to grow cotton in Uzbekistan.

In 1960, the Aral Sea’s volume was estimated to be 263 cubic miles; by 2012 scientists estimated its volume to be just 18 cubic miles.