Sergei Gribalev’s rubber boots sank into the open field’s thick, foul-smelling mud. As he prepared to take water samples and examine a nearby stream, seagulls landed atop swimming pool-sized basins, filled with brown manure. 

“This is just the tip of the iceberg,” he said, through a respirator mask that covered the lower half of his face.

Gribalev is a leading figure in an environmental group named the Green Alliance. We stood on the outskirts of Pobeda in Leningrad Oblast. Located 50 miles northwest of Russia’s second-largest city, Saint Petersburg, and home to 2,000 people, Pobeda’s name translates as “victory.” The stench in the village was appalling. 

Four lagoons overflowed with thousands of tons of animal waste. Some were dotted with rotting chicken carcasses. These lakes of excrement, containing hazardous amounts of phosphorus, have been created by Udarnik, one of the biggest poultry farms in the area. The facility has been dumping manure onto nearby land since it first began operations in the 1970s.