Drain marriage: how officials in Primorye accidentally destroyed a lake
In the city of Lesozavodsk, Primorsky Krai, an entire lake Chernenko disappeared. Apparently, it was accidentally leaked on the instructions of the local administration, which was trying to lower the water level after flooding the neighboring territories. Officials claim that the lake is fed by underground springs and will fill up again. However, local residents call the incident an environmental disaster that occurred due to incompetence. Izvestia dealt with the situation.
What happened to Lake Chernenko
At the beginning of the week, a video appeared on social media in Lesozavodsk, filmed from a car that passes by Lake Chernenko: there is no reservoir, only a bowl formed by an embankment around it is visible. The lake disappeared in less than one day.
The object is named after the first settler of Lesozavodsk. There are bus stops, restaurants and cafes around the lake. Dmitry Yoji Ignatiev, a local musician and activist, told Izvestia that the reservoir is located almost in the center of Lesozavodsk. This is one of the favorite recreation areas of the townspeople — until the mid-90s there was a pontoon station for the rental of pleasure catamarans. There were bird nests on the lake, otter shelters, muskrats, and a lot of fish in the reservoir.
Nearby is the Ussuri River, the lake was connected to it by a channel, and was partially separated by a dam. According to Dmitry Ignatiev, residents of the district built it at their own expense to protect their land from flooding.
In January 2025, the local authorities began to build a new dam, but they obviously did not take into account all the circumstances: in the spring, the river overflowed, and the water on top of the new embankment entered the lake. The territories near the reservoir were flooded. And when the river level dropped, the new dam bowl did not release the water back.
— Then local officials decided to dig a section of the dam with an excavator, which was previously built by residents of the area, and drain the lake a little. The result was predictable — under the pressure of water, the dam was instantly eroded, and within a few hours almost all the water left Lake Chernenko, — said Dmitry Ignatiev.
The moment the water came out of the lake was also filmed by local residents. The author of the video compares the stream to a mountain river — it was so fast.
Dmitry Ignatiev claims that all the fish and aquatic plants died, otters and muskrats left. In the spring there will be no herons, and in the summer there will be places for citizens to relax. And the upper water horizon has disappeared and there is practically no water in the wells of the locals, he says.
The local administration does not actually react publicly to the incident. Only one of the city's chat rooms had a short message.: "According to experts from the Civil Defense and Emergency Management Department, the work is being carried out to minimize the consequences of an emergency, the lake is fed by underground springs and it will be restored independently over time."
— The assurances of officials that the water is already filling the lake and its level has risen by 15 cm are fiction — no one measured individual puddles with a ruler. Even if the lake fills up with water from the river during the next flood, it will be able to recover as an ecological system in many years or decades, Dmitry Ignatiev is sure.
What mistakes did the officials try to correct?
Earlier, the head of the Lesozavodsky municipal district, Konstantin Bantseev, called the lake "the main water intake of the urban district's drainage system," and in November last year he reported that "work has been done to separate the lake from the river," which increased its drainage capacity. Also, according to Bantseev, the authorities were engaged in strengthening its coastline.
Local residents claim that no work has been carried out to deepen or clean the lake, and the reservoir is not a "water intake system", since the city still does not have any drainage plan. Peteris Makarov, a local activist and head of the CBT in the village of Polevoye (part of Lesozavodsk), notes that the only period when the lake performs the functions of a water reservoir is when the water level in Ussuri rises strongly.
The Ussuri River
— There is a railway bridge downstream, where the river narrows, and during a strong influx, the water does not have time to "skip" this bottleneck. Then the water from the river crosses the bridge between the lake and the river at the narrowest point — about a hundred meters — and enters the lake. This way, the residential area was protected from flooding," Peteris Makarov explained to Izvestia.
He considers the decision to build a new dam between the river and Lake Chernenko to be erroneous, especially since local residents, despite repeated requests, have not received an answer from the administration, who made this dam and for what project. According to Peteris Makarov, as a result of these works, both the old dam and the only pipe through which the water went into the river were filled in, which ensured a stable water level in the lake. Now that the water had come through the dam, it could not return to the river.
According to Makarov, the new dam did not serve as a protection for the residential area, but only led to the overflow and subsequent destruction of Lake Chernenko. At the same time, flooding in the village of Polevoye and other territories occurs regularly, and from rainwater, not from the river, but drainage has not been done there.
The administration of the Lesozavodsky Municipal District, head Konstantin Bantseev, and the Ministry of Forestry, Environmental Protection, Wildlife, and Natural Resources of Primorsky Krai did not respond to a request from Izvestia.
But the Primorsky Environmental Prosecutor's Office organized a fact check of the information. The environmental prosecutor will evaluate "actions and decisions when carrying out work in the water protection zone of the Ussuri River."
How can the guilty be punished
Vadim Petrov, Chairman of the Public Council at the Russian Hydrometeorological Service, State Secretary of the Russian Chamber of Ecology, notes that Russian legislation does not use the concept of an "environmental disaster." In the case of Lake Chernenko, "simultaneous direct environmental damage" occurred.
"The engineering action itself — the violation of the integrity of the embankment and the instantaneous discharge of water — is legally interpreted as an accident at a potentially dangerous hydraulic engineering facility," the expert told Izvestia. — Thus, the instantaneous drainage of the lake is primarily an accident. And if the negative effects go beyond the limits of local elimination possibilities and threaten the health of the population, the event is transferred to the status of an environmental emergency.
Clearing riverbeds in Primorye
Vadim Petrov calls such incidents rare, but still recurring.
"There are known episodes in the Voronezh Region in 2016, in Tomsk in 2019 and Kazan in 2023; each time cases were initiated under Articles 246 or 250 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, and business entities had a joint obligation to compensate for the damage calculated by Rosprirodnadzor based on the methodology of the Ministry of Natural Resources," the source told Izvestia.
Kirill Shcherbakov, Senior Lecturer at the Department of Natural Sciences at Synergy University, emphasizes that responsibility should be comprehensive and, importantly, personalized.
"The punishment depends on the extent of the damage and the degree of guilt," he told Izvestia. — This may be disciplinary and administrative liability for officials who signed decisions without the necessary expertise; criminal liability — for example, under Articles 246 or 247 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation for violating environmental regulations during production; financial responsibility for restoring the lake if the damage is considered significant.
Lawyer, Candidate of Law Konstantin Strukov points out that it was under Article 246 of the Criminal Code that a criminal case was initiated in a similar case, when Krugloye Lake near Voronezh was partially drained during construction work.
— Punishment is imposed directly on those responsible for compliance with environmental regulations in the design, construction and operation of industrial and other facilities. Correctly determining their list is the primary task of the investigation. They will also have to compensate for the damage caused," the source told Izvestia.
Lawyer Evgeny Zharov notes that responsibility may extend to officials who authorized work on the dam, and to contractors if their actions did not comply with the design documentation, and to experts who made mistakes.
Will the lake recover
Vadim Petrov emphasizes that it will not be possible to restore such a reservoir without long-term environmental consequences: even with prompt hydraulic engineering intervention, the chemical and biological structure of the ecosystem has already undergone transformation. It will require long-term rehabilitation under the supervision of federal and regional environmental management and environmental protection authorities. He notes that the biophysical consequences will require a three- or five-year recovery cycle, even with rapid dam sealing and repopulation of the ichthyofauna.
—As a result of lake drainage, the activity and direction of riverbed processes can change, this is especially pronounced on small and medium—sized rivers such as the Ussuri," Boris Morgunov, professor at the HSE Institute of Ecology, told Izvestia. — The extinction of the fauna has already become an obvious negative consequence, and this applies not only to the lake itself, but also to the surrounding area. The existing ecosystem has already been severely disrupted. Even with natural filling, you will have to put a lot of effort into restoring the ecosystem of the lake.
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