Voters in Ukrainian City Want Occidental Plant Closed : Environment: The people of Odessa express their fear of an ammonia explosion. Plant managers say the precedent-setting vote is nonbinding.

In a precedent-setting referendum, the people of Odessa have voted overwhelming to shut down ecologically “dangerous facilities” at a huge fertilizer complex built by Occidental Petroleum Corp. near the Black Sea city of more than 1 million, local officials said Wednesday.

About 83% of those participating in the referendum voted to close the facilities at the Odessa Portside Factory, according to unofficial results. Nearly 60% of the Ukrainian city’s voters took part. Plant managers, however, insist that the results are not binding.

The controversial facilities include four massive tanks for storing ammonia and equipment for pumping it aboard ships in the plant’s port. Environmentalists fear that a leak of ammonia could lead to a major explosion and send clouds of toxic gas over the city.

“The referendum shows how active the people have become,” Valeriya V. Pereyaslavskaya, a geologist and member of the election commission that counted the votes, said Wednesday.

“The people are thinking about their own fate and have realized (that) everything now depends on them,” she said. “Earlier, our (Communist Party) bosses decided everything. Now we decide for ourselves and push the government to do things our way.”

Izvestia, the government newspaper, described the referendum in a front-page report as “a precedent (that) has great significance.”

“This is the first case in the country, when, before (politicians) spoke in the name of the people, they first asked the opinion of the people,” Izvestia said.

The Odessa city council had already ordered managers of the factory--which is in Grigoryevka, less than 10 miles from Odessa--to stop using the storage tanks and other equipment.

Ecologists contend that the factory pumps excessive amounts of ammonia and nitrogen dioxide into Odessa’s already highly polluted air. A major leak, they say, would be catastrophic, producing an ammonia cloud that could blow over populated areas. Ammonia can be lethal if inhaled.

But managers refused to close the plant, arguing that the local government has no authority over the state-owned plant, whose exports earn the equivalent of $1.26 billion yearly.

Although the voting took place Sunday, the official results of the referendum have not been released, pending an investigation of the factory’s complaints of violations of polling procedures.

“People were casting votes for their relatives, for family members who did not participate, for their neighbors,” said Pyotr D. Krutogolov, chief of the factory’s department of ecological safety. “So the referendum’s outcome was not the actual opinion of the people.”

In any event, Krutogolov argued, the referendum is not legally binding, because a law on referendums has not been passed. However, a draft law on referendums is before the Congress of People’s Deputies, or national parliament, which is meeting this week in Moscow.

“Only the government may make a decision about our plant or its parts,” Krutogolov said. “The referendum is not a legal document. It’s just an expression of the people’s thinking.

“They feel that their opinion matters; that it is important,” he said. “However, we cannot accept the referendum’s outcome as a genuine expression of their will, simply because they do not have full information about the state of affairs.”

Irina T. Murina, chief of the Odessa municipal department that organized the referendum, said the factory should be forced to do the bidding of the citizens.

“If the Portside Factory does not fulfill the decision of the referendum,” she said, “the public opinion should push the (Soviet enterprise that owns the plant) into deciding this problem.”

Activists say they will continue their protests if factory managers refuse to close the facilities they believe to be dangerous.

“We will picket again and even blockade the factory if we have to,” said Alla Y. Shevchuk, an environmental activist who led the campaign against the factory.

The factory complex--which turns ammonia into urea, a chemical used for fertilizer--was built in the mid-1970s as part of a $20-billion agreement between Soviet authorities and Los Angeles-based Occidental.

Occidental’s late chairman, Armand Hammer, dedicated the plant in 1978, in an era when Soviet citizens were less environmentally conscious and could not have safely protested against it even if they wanted to. The grass-roots drive against the plant is part of a fast-growing Soviet ecology movement that has gathered momentum under Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s reforms.