Alissa De Carbonnel Yahoo News 19 Jan 10;
MOSCOW (AFP) – Environmentalists on Tuesday condemned Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin for allowing a controversial paper plant on Siberia's pristine Lake Baikal to reopen, calling it a "crime."
Putin's decree, signed on January 13 but made public on Monday, reverses an earlier ban on the production of cellulose paper and storage of waste around Lake Baikal, the world's deepest freshwater lake.
It is expected to allow operations to restart at the Baikal paper plant, owned by Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska, which has been closed since October 2008.
"This decree is a crime because to protect the interests of one particular oligarch, Putin is casting aside Russia's entire net of ecological laws," Roman Vazhenkov, head of Greenpeace's Lake Baikal campaign, told AFP.
"To allow chemical wastes to be dumped there: What else can you call it but a crime?" he added.
Lake Baikal, which is on UNESCO's World Heritage list, contains 20 percent of the world's fresh water supply and has been hailed as the "Galapagos of Russia" for its endemic flora and fauna.
Generations of environmental activists have fought to shut the Soviet-era paper mill, founded in 1966, which they say endangers Baikal's fragile ecosystem by spewing waste into the lake.
But the plant is also an economic boon to the region, and 16,000 employees were cut loose when it was forced to shut in October 2008, driven bankrupt by fines for polluting and difficulties amid the global economic crisis.
Activists had worried the aged plant would be reopened in August when Putin, in a surprise stunt, plumbed the lake's depths aboard a mini-submarine and emerged to declare it "ecologically clean."
Putin's decree is a "mistake" for economic as well as ecological reasons, said Igor Chestin, head of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) in Russia.
Though long the largest employer in the thickly forested region, the paper mill has now become less crucial and ecotourism has developed as a competing source of jobs, Chestin said.
"In the year and three months since the factory closed the situation has changed. People have already begun to find work in other spheres, specifically in tourism and hospitality," Chestin told AFP.
"This is a mistake not only because it relaxes the law but because it allows for the comeback of a manufacturer whose importance is waning."
Both Chestin and Vazhenov vowed to appeal to UNESCO to add Lake Baikal to its list of World Heritage site in danger.
"This not on some secret site but Lake Baikal -- a UNESCO site and a place the whole country should be proud of," Vazhenkov added. "This will be a huge blow to Russia's prestige."
The Russian government has taken numerous measures to shore up its struggling Soviet-era industry and halt mass job losses, amid fears that social unrest could spread in economically hard-hit regions.
Metals tycoon Deripaska had been Russia's richest man before the financial crisis but saw his fortune decimated by the slowdown.
Federal regulators in 2001 required the Baikal paper factory to install a closed-water system to mitigate waste leakage into the lake, but the huge cost of the requirements led to the plant's financial insolvency.
Activists said it was unclear whether the new decree would allow the plant to function without the closed-water system.
Putin Allows Lake Baikal Paper Mill To Reopen
Guy Faulconbridge, PlanetArk 20 Jan 10;
MOSCOW - Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has decreed that a paper mill on the shores of Siberia's Lake Baikal can restart production despite years of complaints about pollution of the world's largest freshwater lake.
Putin, in a decree published on the government's website, allowed the plant to resume making pulp, paper and cardboard in the area surrounding the lake, about 5,000 km (3,100 miles) east of Moscow.
Controlled by indebted Russian tycoon Oleg Deripaska, the Soviet-era plant on the southern tip of Baikal was mothballed in 2008 amid a row over pollution of the lake.
Environmental groups have long attacked the mill, saying it threatens the lake which harbors 1,500 species of animals and plants, including a unique type of freshwater seal.
Greenpeace said it was deeply concerned by the plans and that it would ask President Dmitry Medvedev to overturn Putin's decision.
"The Baikal Pulp and Paper plant is an ecologically dangerous enterprise," Greenpeace said in a statement. "It simply has no place on the shores of the sacred lake."
Putin, after personally inspecting the bed of Baikal last year, said that scientists had told him the mill does not harm the lake, which holds one fifth of the world's total surface fresh water and is revered as sacred by Siberian tribes.
The mill employs about 2,000 people and is the main employer in the town of Baikalsk, which has a population of 17,000. It also runs the only heating station in Baikalsk, where temperatures plunge to minus 30 Celsius in the winter.
"The plant does not pose a threat to the ecology of Lake Baikal so we warmly welcome ... (Putin's) decision," Oksana Gorlova, a spokeswoman for the paper plant, said by telephone.
"Almost every family in the town was connected to this enterprise so this decision was taken for the people of Baikalsk," said Gorlova. "Production will start this year."
The plant, built in the 1960s, is controlled by LPK Continental Management, part of Deripaska's Basic Element industrial group. The other 49 percent is owned by the state.
Situated in southeast Siberia, Baikal is the world's oldest and deepest lake, according to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).
(Editing by David Stamp)
