REUTERS
"Water is not the main factor," the ex-worker said. "No amount of water is able to dissolve those volumes of acid to a neutral level."
Ukrainian journalists tracked down former employees of the Crimean Titan plant, who provided their vision of why a chemical disaster occurred.
The reason lays in grave violations of the technology process to dispose of hazardous substances – leftovers of titanium production, TSN reports.
"For three years, hydrolysis acid has been drained into settling reservoirs in full violation of technology," ex-worker of Crimean Titan plant, Oleksandr Ivashchenko, said in an interview with TSN.
"Water is not the main factor," he added. "No amount of water is able to dissolve those volumes of acid to a neutral level."
Another former worker, Mykola Kuratnyk, claims the plant gave up on filtering systems that previously used to ensure operation safety.
Read alsoCrimea disaster: Fifteen children in adjacent Kherson region hospitalized with suspected poisoning
"It was just matter of luck – whether it happens one day or not, and where will the wind blow," he adds.
As UNIAN reported earlier, on the night of August 24, in the north of the occupied Crimea, toxic chemicals were released from the acid storage reservoir at the Crimean Titan plant.
On August 30, Crimean experts suggested that the cause behind the environmental disaster could be evaporation of acid at the Titan Plant due to abnormal heat and the absence of water in the North Crimean Canal.
Read alsoUkraine to appeal to OPCW due to chemical emissions in Russian-occupied Crimea
At the same time, spokesman for the Defense Ministry Dmytro Hutsuliak has said the Ukrainian intelligence revealed that a threatening chemical leak in the north of the Russian-occupied Crimea was a result of an artillery strike that hit chemical waste tanks during the Russian military drills.
Children were evacuated from Armyansk. However, occupation authorities do not recognize the fact of the environmental disaster in Crimea. In this regard, Ukrainian Ombudsperson Liudmyla Denisova has already appealed to the United Nations.