World Cup to leave divisive legacy in Russia’s environment

KALININGRAD, Russia (AP) — October Island was considered to some “a little corner of heaven” in the Russian city of Kaliningrad.

Then a World Cup stadium was built on the island.

Russia claims its World Cup stadiums meet the highest environmental standards, yet some have been built on top of ecologically sensitive areas. The site of the 35,000-seat Kaliningrad Stadium, where England and Spain will play, was one of Kaliningrad’s last natural wetland sites, an island on the polluted Pregolya River. Its soft clay protected water-bird colonies from the port city’s industrial development under first German, then Soviet, then Russian rule.

That changed in 2014 when more than a million tons of sand was spread on the site to stabilize it for the stadium construction.

Depending on your view, it’s either a triumph of engineering or an environmental disaster.

“It was a typical delta island, with peat and a wetland reed-bed. It was a little corner of heaven in the city, where birds lived,” said local ecologist Alexandra Korolyova. “Really, if Russia paid more attention to protecting the environment, it could potentially have become a reservation or national park within the city.”

Korolyova campaigned against the stadium as part of local environmental organization Eco Defense because the island was “a filter” for the polluted river and “we’ve lost a lot and I don’t see what we’ve gained.”

The stadium, as with most of Russia’s venues, is scheduled to become a hub for commercial and residential developments after the World Cup, and that could threaten the remaining wild parts of the island. But there was another option. At the design stage, then-Sports Minister VitalyMutko said the October Island wetland was too costly and challenging a site and pushed for a major rebuild of Kaliningrad’s existing Baltika Stadium. Local officials successfully protested that the old stadium was a historic site, although efforts failed for a similarly historic stadium that was eventually rebuilt in the host city of Yekaterinburg.