The resort town of Anapa in southern Russia filed a lawsuit against the owners of two tanker ships over damages they caused by spilling thousands of tons of oil into the Black Sea late last year.
Anapa City Hall said Monday that it had spent 211 million rubles ($2.4 million) on cleanup efforts since the Dec. 15 oil spill, when the aging tankers Volgoneft-239 and Volgoneft-212 were damaged in a storm.
The oil spill has been described as one of Russia’s worst environmental disasters in decades, contaminating beaches and causing widespread deaths of marine wildlife and seabirds.
“The amount is not final, and the administration intends to increase the claims in the future,” Anapa City Hall said, noting that it was seeking damages to the amount it has spent on cleanup efforts.
The lawsuit, filed in the Krasnodar region arbitration court, names Moscow-based Volgatransneft and Perm-based Kama Shipping as defendants. Regional transportation prosecutors filed separate lawsuits against the two companies in January.
The Krasnodar region court has scheduled hearings for April 7 in yet another lawsuit brought by the Russian Maritime Rescue Service against both companies, according to the business newspaper Kommersant.
Russia’s Emergency Situations Ministry said Friday that workers and volunteers had removed nearly 150,000 metric tons of contaminated sand from beaches in the Krasnodar region and annexed Crimea. However, the ministry warned that warmer weather has caused more oil slicks to appear off the coast.
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