In July, an environmental forum Soobschestvo (Community’) was held in Tula, organized by the Public Chamber of the Russian Federation. The topic of the forum was Nature and society: How to achieve harmony. The event passed almost unnoticed in the mass media, while in fact, during the forum, it was found out how huge the gap between environmentalists and public officials is: The first ones are more advanced in environmental matters than those who are obliged to resolve socio-environmental conflicts with budgetary money and not only.
The almost total absence of any kind of legislators was touching: neither the federal deputies nor the regional deputies reached the forum. The complete prevalence of representatives of the executive authorities, who complained that our law is no good, the enforcement is not good, the supervisor is engaged in something incomprehensible, i.e, the pants of the lieutenant Rzhevsky are permanently crapped by some kind of anonymous villain. But the new Minister of Natural Resources and Ecology, Dmitry Kobylkin formed a new department in the structure of the ministry for the preserved near-shore territories and Lake Baikal immediately after his appointment, as his deputy Ivan Valentik stated proudly. Apparently, after this Baikal has started blooming, for the first time in history, a participant of the forum, Moscow social activist Daria Mitina commented.
So, according to the data of ex-minister of ecology and natural resources (1991-1996), Viktor Danilov-Danilyan, 16 cubic meters (1 cubic meter = 1 billion tons) of polluted sewage are discharged only through the pipes. And not through the pipes? Adequate monitoring is not available, but, according to the same ex-minister, 90% is non-point (diffuse) pollution. The paradox is that the money that companies pay for the negative impact on nature is purely symbolic because that law regulating the size of these payments was adopted in December 1991.
And now about Baikal, 60% of the coast of which is overgrown with Spirogyra, algae dangerous for the pond. Environmentalists have been beating the alarm for years on the fact that its pollution is becoming catastrophic. Now, because of the excess of nutrients, especially nitrogen and phosphorus, the lake has bloomed.’ This is due to discharges of untreated wastewater and the use of detergents containing phosphates. More than 60% of the polluted runoff is from the housing and utilities sector. Deteriorated sewage treatment plants do not save the situation the unique lake is dying.
Is there a way out? Ex-Minister Viktor Danilov-Danilyan, in particular, offers to sell detergents with a content of no more than 1-2% of phosphorus in the Baikal area. It is known, for example, that producers of imported products, such as BASF, Rhone-Poulenc, and others, sell us products containing 17-18% of phosphorus, and they produce phosphorus-free detergents for themselves, that is, without phosphorus. He estimated that with the purchase of free’ products, the difference in budget financing will amount to several million rubles, but nevertheless, it will be much cheaper than saving the waters of Lake Baikal from chemistry. With such an offer, Danilov-Danilyan appealed to Sergei Ivanov, the Authorized Representative of the President for Environmental Protection, to which he received a notification that the letter has been sent to the Ministry of Natural Resources. A month later an answer came from the Ministry of Natural Resources, It is not up to us, write to the Ministry of Industry and Trade of the Russian Federation. And the Ministry of Industry and Trade of the Russian Federation, after months of silence, said that the problem will be solved within the framework of the Customs Union, but Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan, which are part of the CU, object. That’s all.
Few people know, but it turns out that there is a federal program Protection of Lake Baikal. In the period of 2012-2020, it is planned to allocate almost 26 billion rubles ($410mln) for this program. More than ten billion has already been allocated. The effect is not even zero, but the reverse: apparently, the allocated funds literally go to the deepest bottom of the planet, where they are lost.
Meanwhile, the Baikal has become shallow to a critical level: the drought in the basin continues for several years, but the restrictions on the drainage of water remain at the level of Soviet calculations and amount to no less than 1.3 thousand cubic meters per minute. The functioning of coastal enterprises is designed for a certain amount of water, and it does not bother their leadership, as well as power engineers that such draining can no longer be considered a norm.
Exactly one year ago, during a working trip to the Far East, Vladimir Putin instructed the Prosecutor General’s Office to investigate illegal and environmentally harmful activities on Lake Baikal and identify those responsible for the pollution of the unique lake. Also, the president ordered to pay special attention to the effectiveness and priorities of spending and by March 2018 to adjust the boundaries of the water protection zone of Lake Baikal.
On August 31, 2017, the Russian Prosecutor General’s Office even sent a commission to Baikal to inspect objects that have a negative impact on the Baikal natural territory, as reported by the official representative of the department Aleksandr Kurennoy. And already in November last year, the prosecutor’s check issued impressive figures.
However, June 28 this year at the departmental board in Irkutsk deputy prosecutor of the Russian Federation Aleksandr Buksman said that the Prosecutor General’s Office in conjunction with the Ministry of Natural Resources and Rosprirodnadzor (‘Federal Service for the Oversight of Nature’) intend to equate the discharge of hazardous wastewater into the Baikal to the location of waste.
It is necessary to prepare regulatory proposals that equate the discharge of hazardous wastewater into the reservoir to the disposal of waste. Licensing this activity is necessary, Interfax quotes Buksman, who, among other things, stressed that the Prosecutor General’s Office should initiate criminal cases upon the discharge of waste into Baikal.
It is interesting, what did the specialized departments do in the past years in general and a year after the presidential commission in particular? How long will it take them to equate the discharge of wastewater to the disposal of waste, while these same runoffs will safely complete their journey in the bowels of Lake Baikal? And then, how can a criminal case brought against a polluter clean a pond? One thing is clear: Russia is losing the unique lake at a cosmic pace. Its water turns into green slime, and the blooming’ is already noticeable from the orbit: the pictures of the ScanEx confirm that it spreads in the thickness of the open waters as well.
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