Angara region: the State Duma asks to stop the narrowing of the water protection zone of Lake Baikal

At an expanded meeting of committees, State Duma deputies decided to ask the Russian government to suspend the passage of the draft order to reduce the water protection zone of Lake Baikal. They called the initiative of the Ministry of Natural Resources of the Russian Federation “raw”, noting that the bill does not fully relies on scientific research, reports State Duma deputy from the Angara region Nikolai Nikolaev.

The Ministry of Natural Resources and Ecology of Russia intends to reduce the protected territory of Lake Baikal by almost 10 times - from 57 thousand square kilometers to 6 thousand. The reason is local residents who, due to ecosone restrictions, have problems with the placement of cemeteries and waste. Today, within the boundaries of the protected territory of Baikal there are 167 infrastructure facilities, 40 places of placement of municipal waste, about 40 cemeteries, about 540 km of roads without a solid coating pass.

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In June 2017, the inhabitants of the island of Olkhon complained to Vladimir Putin that due to the protection of the lake they could not graze cattle, fish, and lay roads. Then the head of the Ministry of Natural Resources, Sergei Donskoy, first announced the need for adjustments.

In January, residents of the Irkutsk region tried in the Supreme Court of Russia to challenge the boundaries of the water protection and fish protection zones of Baikal, saying that the expansion of the guarded zone violated their civil rights, prevents the construction of houses and hotels. The court refused residents and entrepreneurs to satisfy the claim. Ecologists note that the majority of plaintiffs are the owners of the Baikal hotels, the number of which has sharply increased on the lake coast in the past five years.

In November 2017, the Prosecutor General’s Office estimated the damage to Baikal from facilities affecting the ecology at 156 million rubles. Only from stationary sources 747 thousand tons of pollutants are released into the air annually.