{"id":217409,"date":"2010-01-21T11:37:51","date_gmt":"2010-01-21T16:37:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.circleofblue.org\/waternews\/?p=10862"},"modified":"2010-01-21T11:37:51","modified_gmt":"2010-01-21T16:37:51","slug":"putin-approves-waste-discharges-into-lake-baikal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/217409","title":{"rendered":"Putin Approves Waste Discharges into Lake Baikal"},"content":{"rendered":"

Environmentalists contend that pollution from the paper mill is the biggest threat to the lake\u2019s biodiversity.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

\"Lake<\/p>\n

A decree signed last week by Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin will allow a paper mill on the shore of Lake Baikal to resume dumping sewage and waste water into the lake, the Wall Street Journal<\/a> reports.<\/p>\n

The decree removes waste discharges from the production of pulp and paper from a list of banned activities adopted in 2001.<\/p>\n

The Baikalsk Pulp and Paper Mill stopped operations in October 2008 after environmental authorities ordered the mill to install a closed-loop water system, which would have eliminated wastewater discharges. The company decided the regulations made the mill unprofitable and shut it down in February 2009, causing massive unemployment in the mill town of Baikalsk, the WSJ reports.<\/p>\n

The mill\u2019s majority owner is Oleg Deripaska, the richest man in Russia until the global financial crisis began two years ago. Critics of the deal argue that Deripaska leveraged his influence with the Russian government to get pulp production removed from the list.<\/p>\n

The prime minister\u2019s press secretary denied that Putin was pressured by Deripaska\u2019s interests, according to the WSJ.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe only interests we can speak about protecting,\u201d he said, \u201care the interests of the 16,000 people in Baikalsk, whose lives depend almost entirely on that mill.\u201d<\/p>\n

Though Lake Baikal, which holds one-fifth of the world\u2019s unfrozen freshwater, is protected by the UNESCO World Heritage, the Worldwide Fund for Wildlife thinks the water body is still in jeopardy.<\/p>\n

\u201cRestart of the mill is being regarded as a necessity to preserve the jobs,\u201d said Igor Chestin, WWF Russia Director, in a press release<\/a>. \u201cHowever, the resumption of its work will mean that Russia violates its obligations as one of the signatory party of the UNESCO World Heritage Convention.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe new resolution weakens the protection level of the World Natural Heritage site. It means that when a mission of the World Heritage committee could come to Russia and in the future Lake Baikal would be given a status of a World Heritage site under threat.\u201d<\/p>\n

Source: Wall Street Journal<\/a><\/p>\n

Read more from UNESCO<\/a> about Lake Baikal<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Environmentalists contend that pollution from the paper mill is the biggest threat to the lake\u2019s biodiversity. A decree signed last week by Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin will allow a paper mill on the shore of Lake Baikal to resume dumping sewage and waste water into the lake, the Wall Street Journal reports. The decree […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-217409","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217409","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=217409"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217409\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=217409"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=217409"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=217409"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}