Minnesota 2020 has warned in the past that 300 or more ghost towns are devolving and will disappear entirely unless new reasons are found to sustain rural populations in small places.
The same is happening in the Ukraine, west of Chernobyl, even though the area involved is supposed to be safe from lingering radiation contamination from the world’s worst nuclear reactor meltdown 24 years ago.
The online version of the KyivPost.com newspaper at Kiev carries an outstanding story about four villages declining into ghost towns. The report is written by Post writer Olesia Oleshko. The Kiev newspaper, however, is edited by former St. Paul Pioneer Press writer Brian Bonner, which is the reason the online paper has a following in the Twin Cities.
Nothing as dramatic as the April 26, 1986 nuclear accident has occurred in rural Minnesota. But the closing of schools, absence of health care and social services, aging population and out-migration of families from Nivekske and neighboring towns offer a stark picture of what’s to come for many rural Minnesota communities.
It’s a good read. And eclectic readers may well want to add the KyivPost.com to their sites for international news.
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