In the yards of the village s small wooden houses, bottles are stacked in neat rows. Yet many here say the nearby trash pile is the least of their worries. Vera has been living 300 feet from the Gornostai dump for the last 15 years. A pensioner, she moved to the village to be closer to her kids. You see, this is a nice place, she says, looking past the mountain of garbage to the sea behind it.
People come from the city to go swimming just a few kilometers away.
Other villagers say they are content with the buses that go to Vladivostok a few times a day and say the electricity only goes out when strong winds blow. Although many city and government environment officials are concerned about the dump s effects on the ecology and the people who live nearby, a city doctor maintains it s not more poisonous than other sources of pollution. There is no proof the dump harms people s health, says Galina Yakovyets, director of the hygiene department at the city s epidemiological center. Even the fumes, she says, pose no risk to the people living across the road. Yet the Primorye Committee for the Conservation of the Environment, a federal-level agency, says chemicals emitted from the burning trash include carbon monoxide, nitrous oxide, sulfuric oxide and dioxin a chemical used in warfare.