Lifebuoy

The Baikal protection program did not work out - this is the result of a showdown between officials

Excursions to the bottom of Lake Baikal have become fashionable. This summer, Deputy Prime Minister Alexei Kudrin and Avatar director James Cameron also visited. For them, it's entertainment. But Prime Minister Vladimir Putin a year ago sank to the bottom with a check. Putin came to the conclusion that the water in the lake, though cloudy—"plankton soup"—is clean. Soon the government allowed the Baikal Pulp and Paper Mill, which environmentalists consider the main threat to the lake, to resume work, and a new multibillion-dollar Baikal protection program was promised as compensation. But the plan was only half-fulfilled: the plant is working, but officials have not been able to write a coherent program.

As early as the beginning of the year, as soon as the pulp and paper mill began its work, President Medvedev instructed to develop a targeted program for the protection of Lake Baikal and the development of the adjacent territory. In June, the Ministry of Natural Resources presented a concept: the ministry calculated that 70.7 billion rubles are needed to reduce harmful emissions, dispose of waste accumulated on the coast and develop eco-tourism on Lake Baikal, including 49.5 billion rubles from the federal budget. But, as it became known to Newsweek, the presented document was criticized both in the Kremlin and in the White House. Officials are sure that it was Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin who caught his long-time opponent, Minister of Natural Resources Yuri Trutnev, doing poor-quality work.

Forgotten Combine

Newsweek had at its disposal a report by presidential aide Arkady Dvorkovich, who rated the concept of the Ministry of Natural Resources with a two. It does not contain specific measures, Dvorkovich is dissatisfied. There are only descriptions of the unique nature of Baikal and ambitious goals that are not clear how it is supposed to be achieved: a 35.7% reduction in the discharge of polluted wastewater by 2020, the restoration of 80% of the territory adjacent to Baikal, and an increase in the number of tourists by 40%. At the same time, writes Dvorkovich, “the concept does not mention any plans for the liquidation and mitigation of the consequences of the Baikal Pulp and Paper Mill, or even the existence of a pulp and paper mill.” Due to poor design, Dvorkovich proposed to postpone the launch of the program to 2012 and has already received the president's approval.

An official of the Ministry of Natural Resources says that the concept is scolded in vain - in such documents a list of specific measures is not supposed, but there should be goals and objectives. Nevertheless, the concept has already been rewritten and will soon be submitted to the Ministry of Economic Development. “There is no need to reinvent the wheel here, it is necessary to build and reconstruct water supply systems, waste processing stations, coastline protection systems,” says a ministry official. While he hopes that the program will work on time, from 2011.

But there is little chance of that. A source close to the leadership of the Ministry of Natural Resources says that the program failed not by chance. This is a hardware trip, he says: Minister of Natural Resources Yuri Trutnev wrote a letter to Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin asking him to extend the preparation of the document, but the Deputy Prime Minister did not convey the request to his leadership - the letter was "lost" somewhere. I had to put in what I had. As a result, Putin announced a reprimand to Deputy Minister of Natural Resources Igor Maidanov “for improper organization of work” on the execution of instructions and the preparation of the FTP.

The clouds are gathering over the minister. “Everyone is ready that from September everything could go according to the worst scenario: the boss could end up in an airless space,” a source close to Trutnev is worried. Government officials do not hide the fact that Deputy Prime Minister Sechin does not like the Minister of Natural Resources and, if possible, paints the prime minister where he did not work well. “[Energy Minister] Shmatko is at least trying, but Trutnev has been doing nothing for many years,” says a source close to Sechin.

Wiped away tears

While officials are sorting things out, the prosecutor's office of the Irkutsk region opened 12 administrative cases for exceeding the maximum level of phenol, formaldehyde and other harmful substances in wastewater that enters Baikal. Environmental monitoring data indicate a rapid deterioration of the environmental situation near the lake, Arkady Dvorkovich writes in a report to the president.

It is very difficult for the ministry to prepare a program if it is not clear what they think at the top, says Yevgeny Shvarts, director of environmental policy for the World Wildlife Fund of Russia. It is not known for what they will be awarded, and for what they will be fired. The best measure to protect the lake would be the closure of the Baikal pulp and paper mill, he is sure.

Disputes about the Baikal pulp and paper mill began in the 1960s, immediately after its construction. Since the 1980s, they have been trying to either close it or redesign it. In the early 2000s, it was decided to transfer the pulp and paper mill to a closed water cycle, in which the wastewater from the enterprise does not enter Baikal. Part of the money for new treatment facilities was given by the state, part by the owner of the plant, the Continental Management company, controlled by Oleg Deripaska.

Yuri Trutnev in 2008 solemnly cut the ribbon of a new innovative enterprise, and almost immediately the plant stood up. The owners put the government before an unpleasant fact. It turned out that in a closed mode, the plant can only produce unbleached pulp, which no one buys. The main product of the plant is bleached pulp, but its production cannot be done without wastewater discharge. The Ministry of Defense also realized it: bleached pulp is used in the construction of Topol-M missiles, and the Baikal Pulp and Paper Mill is its only producer in Russia.

In addition, the pulp and paper mill is a city-forming enterprise for Baikalsk, which, after the plant was shut down, was among the most problematic single-industry towns. In the end, Putin gave the go-ahead to restart the plant. In January, when the government made this decision, the plant was on the verge of bankruptcy. Now it works in the same mode, draining waste into the lake. “We received the first pulp on January 8, 2010, a huge number of workers gathered, someone furtively tore off pieces of pulp, left it as a souvenir, wiped away tears, took autographs,” says Konstantin Proshkin, director of the plant. According to him, already in July the plant reached a profitable level, having started transfers of taxes and fees. This year it is planned to produce 45,000 tons of pulp, mostly bleached, and even make a profit of 51 million rubles.

The plant emphasizes that production was resumed temporarily until they figure out how to repurpose the pulp and paper mill or create other jobs in the city. All these are words, the head of the Baikal program of Greenpeace Russia, Roman Vazhenkov, is worried. He tells how in July a delegation from the UNESCO World Natural Heritage Fund came to Lake Baikal and Russian officials told how harmful production would be closed step by step. True, the terms sounded very different, from 30 months to ten years. UNESCO was satisfied with this, the Russian Greens were not. According to Vazhenkov, the management of the pulp and paper mill is sure that the enterprise has been launched forever.

The answer to the question about the plant's prospects could be in the concept of the Ministry of Natural Resources, but it is not there. The authors of the document believe that the main polluter of Lake Baikal is not the pulp and paper mill at all, but the capital of Buryatia, Ulan-Ude, where treatment facilities cannot cope with municipal waste. This is not so, Vazhenkov is convinced, 86% of the harmful substances that enter Baikal are thrown out by the plant. However, Academician Mikhail Grachev, who heads the Limnological Institute of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, where lakes are studied, is skeptical about these figures. “In what units do they generally measure this harm? In kilograms?” Grachev gets angry. “Compared to Baikal, the plant is very small. If all mankind is drowned in Baikal, the water will rise by a centimeter,” the academician explains clearly.

Next year, scientists and environmental activists will not stop arguing about the causes of Baikal pollution—the state program to protect the lake will not work. Neither President Medvedev, who ordered the writing of the FTP, nor Prime Minister Putin, who once already "saved" Lake Baikal from the oil pipeline of Transneft, has yet managed to score points in protecting the unique nature. In this whole situation, perhaps, only Oleg Deripaska won: during the shutdown of the plant, he got rid of him by selling a controlling stake in the Continentalinvest company of his partner Nikolai Makarov.

Artem Vernidub participated in the preparation of the article