The company "Lake Baikal" stopped the plant by a court decision

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

The court suspended the construction of a plant for bottling and exporting Baikal water to China - for violations of environmental legislation. Experts and observers say that in fact this production is the lesser of evils on Lake Baikal, and could bring many benefits. But chance and fierce competition for precious water intervened in the matter.

The owner of the plant under construction in the village of Kultuk, Irkutsk Region, is Aquasib LLC. The company is registered in Irkutsk, but its main owner is the Daqing water company Lake Baikal from China. The project was launched in 2013.

The first stage of the plant was to be commissioned at the end of 2019, and the plant was to be fully launched in 2021. The total investment is about 1.5 billion rubles. The full design capacity of the enterprise is 528 thousand liters of water per day or 190 million liters per year. According to Aquasib, 80% of the production will be exported, the remaining 20% will go to the Russian market.

In 2019, a noise arose around the plant, which reached the country's top leadership. The prosecutor's office came to the construction site with urgent checks, rallies and pickets began in the Irkutsk region. Result - On March 15, the Kirovsky District Court of Irkutsk ruled to suspend work until the violations were completely eliminated.

Observers familiar with the situation argue that the indignant residents of the coastal zone of Irkutsk were not sufficiently informed, but somewhere they were openly deceived, and a competing business, defending only its financial interests, stands behind the wide public resonance.

What the builders of the plant violated

Thorough inspections of the plant under construction began after social activists and local residents sounded the alarm: in the village of Kultuk, protesters set up a banner with a photograph of Ramzan Kadyrov and the inscription "Ramzan, save Baikal!"

From the authorities one of the first to draw attention to possible violations during the construction of the plant was the State Duma deputy from Buryatia, member of the Russian parliament's committee on ecology Nikolai Buduyev. He wrote a request to the Baikal Environmental Prosecutor's Office, noting that water extraction would not damage the lake, unlike the construction of a plant.

True, the concerns of the local population were not associated with the lake, but more with their own comfort. “Residents of Kultuk, who live in a specially protected natural area and, sorry, cannot build a toilet without permission, are worried whether the sanitary protection zone that will appear around the plant will worsen their situation,” Buduyev wrote on his Facebook page.

His colleague, State Duma deputy and chairman of the parliamentary committee on ecology and environmental protection, Vladimir Burmatov, sent a similar appeal to the Russian Prosecutor General's Office.

During the inspections, the environmental department, as well as the prosecutor's office, found traces of oil products and production wastes on the lake shore near the plant under construction.

In addition, the owner did not provide the inspectors with documents allowing them to carry out excavation work for arranging trenches for water conduits; public hearings on the construction of this plant were also held with violations.

Rights of birds and stars

The environmental prosecutor's office, having started the inspection, almost immediately drew the owners' attention to the fact that the construction site affects swamps where rare birds stop.

Scientists were also worried about the fate of birds. Irkutsk ornithologist Vitaly Ryabtsev said that a screamer swan, various species of ducks, a black stork and a gray crane fly to these swamps.

However, the company-owner of AquaSib assured that after the completion of construction it will restore the ecosystem of the bogs, as this procedure was originally provided for in the project.

According to the leading researcher of the Geological Institute of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, ecologist Evgeny Kislov, the habitat of birds can indeed be restored. “If the fertile soil layer is collected in piles. If the route is guarded during operation, the birds will only get better - less disturbing factors,”Kislov commented to Sibnet.ru.

At that time, while the supervisory authorities were checking the owners of the plant, a native of Buryatia, and now a stylist and showman, Sergei Zverev, went to a picket in front of the Kremlin.

After a while, ex-participant of the show "Dom-2" Victoria Bonya joined Zverev on Instagramm by posting a post calling not to touch Baikal. Zverev, by the way, was later summoned to the police for an unauthorized rally on Red Square.

High-level dispute

Against the background of the "star" resonance, the situation was commented on by the head of Buryatia, Alexei Tsydenov, and the governor of the Irkutsk region, Sergei Levchenko.

Tsydenov said that he does not consider the plant a threat to Lake Baikal: “I will be honest, I will not flirt. We have 1.3 thousand cubic meters of water per second through the Angarsk dam per second. 1.3 million liters per second flows into the Angara through the Irkutsk dam. Therefore, the volumes that the plant plans to pump out are passed by the Angarsk dam in one and a half minutes."

In his opinion, the plant, on the contrary, could bring additional advantages both for the local population and for the budget of the Irkutsk region. However, he added, owners must comply with the laws of the Russian Federation.

“If this is a full-fledged factory that bottled, creates added value, creates jobs, pays taxes here and employs local people, and not visitors from a neighboring country, then I think this might be the case. There is also the issue of environmental requirements. But high requirements are imposed on such factories, so I don't see any serious problems for Baikal,”said the head of Buryatia.

A diametrically opposite position was taken by his colleague from the other side of Lake Baikal - the governor of the Irkutsk region Sergei Levchenko. After the results of the prosecutor's check, he called the construction of the plant futile.

“Those violations that were revealed during the environmental impact assessment, in my opinion, are almost insurmountable. There is a place that is quite environmentally protected from all sides. I don’t see any prospects for bottling water at this place,”said the Governor of Priangarye.

The controversial issue eventually reached the country's top leadership. During a meeting with members of the Russian national teams at the closing of the Universiade, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev was asked about the construction of the plant. The prime minister admitted that he had been asked about this more than once and promised to investigate the situation.

What is Baikal water silent about

But this water bottling plant is far from the first on Lake Baikal. Deputy Baikal Interregional Environmental Prosecutor Alexei Kalinin said on the air of "Russia-24" that five such factories have been operating on the lake for several years already: three in the village of Listvyanka, the fourth in the Slyudyansky district, and the fifth in Baikalsk.

The plant in Baikalsk, by the way, belongs to Lake Baikal - Lunchuan LLC. Despite the name, the company is registered in the Irkutsk region, director Alexei Mager. The main activity of the company is the production of soft drinks and mineral waters.

However, the activities of this plant were temporarily suspended for violation of sanitary standards. According to the supervisory authorities, specialists recognized bottled water as technical and unsuitable for drinking.

Another bottling company for Baikal water, Production Company Baikal Aqua, was registered in the Irkutsk Region in February 2019, according to Forbes. Alexey Arnautov, director for new projects of UC Rusal Oleg Deripaska became the head. And the trading company with the same name was headed by Svetlana Kalacheva, whose namesake works in UC Rusal as the head of the department.

Deripaska's structures will produce water and distribute it, since Baikal is an important area of social and environmental activity for him, a Forbes source noted.

Myths about water and China

According to a source in the government who is familiar with the situation, in fact, not five, but about 20 factories for bottling water of various design capacities operate on Lake Baikal. And, in his opinion, this is the most environmentally friendly type of production on the lake.

Ecologist Kislov agrees with him: "Bottling water on Lake Baikal is the most environmentally friendly type of business." However, he questions the procedure for holding public hearings and the legality of obtaining some documents for the conduct of work. “This is especially true for work in undisturbed natural areas,” Kislov commented to Sibnet.ru.

And the problem that was revealed during the checks, in fact, does not represent a catastrophe. According to the expert, pollution with oil products and construction waste is easily eliminated in the shortest possible time. Perhaps they forgot to tell the inhabitants of Kultuk about this, the scientist suggested. On the other hand, there is a high probability that other producers of bottled water are taking advantage of the situation in order to eliminate competitors.

In addition, according to a source from Sibnet.ru, water bottling industries are interested in a good reputation and environmental scandals for them are direct image and financial losses.

“These factories are useful because in the future they will control the same operation of treatment facilities, they are interested in clean water. And when these factories are "spreading rot" now, it's bad,”the source commented.

He noted that the prevailing opinion about "the evil Chinese who will drink the whole Baikal" is a very profitable myth, warmed up from time to time by competing structures. In fact, rumors about a great demand for Baikal water in China are an exaggeration.

“Those people who are now trying to sell Baikal water in China will tell you that the water“doesn’t go”. It is expensive and the Chinese do not really need it,”the interlocutor summed up.

However, the measures taken by the prosecutor's office and the court to suspend the work of the Aquasib plant are still necessary, said State Duma Deputy Nikolai Buduev. But, in his opinion, the bottling of Baikal water is the smallest of the threats to the lake and other things need to be paid attention to.

“I have a request to social activists and environmentalists,” said the deputy. - Pay attention to the poor condition of the treatment facilities on the shores of Lake Baikal, to the fact that the camp sites on the shore place cesspools in the ground and waste is absorbed into the ground, and further into the lake, to the problem of a pulp and paper mill, where 6 million tons of sludge lie on the shore waste, which pose a truly serious threat to the ecology of Lake Baikal”.

REFERENCE: Lake Baikal, the deepest (1.6 kilometers) on the planet, belongs to water bodies of tectonic origin. This largest reservoir of fresh water (23, 7 thousand cubic kilometers, 19% of the world reserve) is located in the southern part of Eastern Siberia. A significant part of the flora and fauna is endemic, originated here and are not found anywhere else more than 1, 8 thousand species of plants and animals.