Wetlands Project Promises Clean Water for Historic Valaam Island

by Polina Agakhaniants and Alexander Karpov

Valaam Island is a place of great natural beauty and the site of a Russian national monument, the Spaso-Preobrazhenskii Monastery. In fact, Valaam, in the middle of Europe's largest lake, Ladoga, is not truly an island but rather an archipelago made up of two large and 50 smaller islands that rose 2,000 years ago from the depths of the lake. The island archipelago has been occupied for nearly seven centuries.

Over the years there have been many upheavals. Orthodox missionaries forced out pagan residents, Swedish detachments burned the original monastery and monks and workers restored it by decree of Peter the Great, bringing in an economic golden age. The glory of the monastery grew and attracted pilgrims and new brotherhoods that built new, smaller and secluded monasteries on different islands of the archipelago. The monastery culture lapsed into obscurity again when the area was incorporated into Lutheran Finland at the end of the 19th century, but nonetheless the construction of the 13th monastery was completed in 1917. By this time the words "Valaam" and "monastery" had become synonymous.

Immediately after the Revolution, Valaam survived the collapse of the Russian Orthodox Church because it remained part of Finland, but then the Lutheran Church insisted on changing the canon of the orthodox services. The Finns also stationed a garrison there that cut down the island's forest. Earlier no tree could have been cut down without the blessing of the abbot.

The monks abandoned Valaam along with the Finnish army in 1940 during the Soviet-Finnish Winter War. Then, after World War II, the island became part of the Soviet Union and the monastery was used to house people who had been badly injured during the war. Valaam and its monasteries have now become a popular tourist destination and its permanent population of 500 swells during the summer, with an influx of children, tourists and pilgrims.

The steady stream of foreign tourists that journey to Valaam from nearby St. Petersburg visit only a small section of the archipelago. They are spared all but one of the rugged living conditions local residents face-the appalling sanitary system. Valaam is not the only place in Russia with such problems, but the contrast between the beauty of the stone churches and the terrible state of the toilet facilities makes the problem all the more striking.

The sewer system on Valaam was built in the second half of the last century and has not been improved since then. Some sewage water accumulates in the basements of homes; some is lost through leaks in the system and seeps into the soil. The rest "successfully" reaches Lake Ladoga's Monastery Bay. Household wastewater combined with the waste from ships exacerbates the generally poor condition of Lake Ladoga, which over the past decades has become increasingly eutrophic due to effluent from the many industrial and agricultural enterprises located along its shores.

The dirty water flows back into Valaam's water supply in Monastery Bay, and the cycle repeats itself. The government sanitation inspectorate has shut down the system, but currently there is no other place to get water. During the summer of 1995, several cases of dysentery were recorded on Valaam.

The local authorities have developed several proposals for setting up purification equipment on Valaam using the latest technology. But they are far beyond the island's modest resources, although local authorities continue to seek money from the federal government or other sponsors.

Experts from a nearby NGO, the St. Petersburg Society of Naturalists, have come up with an alternative solution to Valaam's water treatment problems. Working with experts from the English firm, Yorkshire Water, Ltd., the Society proposes to clean the waste water by creating "artificial wetlands" that purify water with aquatic plants.

The basic idea behind this method is to create an earth and water ecosystem that reproduces natural processes. A cascade of five shallow marshes would be constructed and filled with specially selected plants capable of processing the entire volume of household waste water on Valaam. The pollutants in the water-organic compounds of nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium-would be absorbed by microorganisms and plants. In the process, sediments would settle and be filtered out while the disease-causing microbes would die, producing purified water clean enough to be released into the water system. Once built, purification facilities of this type function with almost no human interference. They become a part of the natural environment and help increase the local biodiversity. They require no special equipment, electricity or technical staff and create no new wastes.

The Society has developed plans for this type of natural wastewater treatment system specifically tailored to Valaam, but the draft must be approved by a number of official bodies before construction can begin. While the whole system could be assembled in less than two months, negotiations have been going on for a year and may well continue for another year.

If successful in a place as well-known as Valaam, the wetland treatment program could serve as a pilot project for all of Northwest Russia. As a result, the idea has won support from a number of sources: ISAR's Seeds of Democracy program provided a grant for the drafting of the plan; ECOLOGIA offered equipment for monitoring; and the Clean Baltic Coalition also supported the project.

Local authorities, unused to experts proposing inexpensive solutions, have responded cautiously. The project appears too simple and cheap to be effective; expecting complicated equipment to solve such a persistent problem, they find it hard to accept a plan that requires only plants and water. Both government officials and technical experts find this strange. Thus the real advantages of this project may turn out to be its most serious drawbacks. It is not big or costly or impressive enough. It does not promise large profits for those who implement it or for the island authorities. There will be no ribbon to be cut at the entrance to a newly constructed building. There will be no walls on which to mount a plaque commemorating the sponsors.

Of course, implementing this alternative water purification plan will not solve all of Valaam's problems. The island needs clean drinking water, modern toilet facilities and a modern sewage system. However, setting up a system for inexpensive biological water treatment would help overcome the unchallenged assumption that the solution to Valaam's water problems must be extremely costly. It is important to find alternatives to Russia's traditional reliance on expensive technology to solve every problem. The isolated Valaam Archipelago is an ideal testing site for alternative approaches since its isolation makes it absurd to implement large-scale solutions. And without a solution to its water problems, even beautiful Valaam may be unable to retain its inhabitants.

Polina Agakhaniants and Alexander Karpov represent the Valaam section of the St. Petersburg Society of Naturalists. Translated by Andrew Reese and Jennifer Bruce.