Lake Baikal is one of the planet’s greatest lakes and the lake of superlative degrees: the deepest (1,637m), the oldest (about 25 million years), inhabited by the most diverse flora and fauna among fresh-water lakes.
Lake Baikal in 2004
Lake Baikal has been designated by UNESCO as a world heritage site.
The water of the lake is also unique both in its quality and quantity: 23.6 thousand cubic kilometers, which makes up for over 20% of the world stock of fresh water. The hollow of Lake Baikal is the central part of the Baikal rift area, one of the largest on the Earth ancient system of cracks in the earth crust. Together with its basin, Lake Baikal is a very special and delicate natural ecosystem that maintains the natural process of production of cleanest water on earth.
In 1996 due to its superb uniqueness Lake Baikal became a UNESCO World Heritage site.
From that time on almost every year saving Lake Baikal has been in the focus of heated discussions at the sessions of the World Heritage Committee. Russian authorities don’t seem to take obligations to save the lake seriously enough.
For over 40 years the pulp and paper mill in the town of Baikalsk has been the most burning environmental problem of Lake Baikal.
The Baikalsk Pulp and Paper Mill (BPPM) is located on the south-eastern shore of Baikal. Since the commissioning of the Mill, a town of Baikalsk with the population over 17 thousand people has grown near the mill.
Before it stopped in 2008, each day the BPPM dumped up to 120 thousand cubic meters of wastewater into Baikal. As the Mill uses chlorine in the pulp bleaching process, its discharge contains highly toxic chlorine organic chemicals, including dioxins as well as organic compounds of sulfur, phenols, and other harmful chemicals. Local people eat fish, meat and fat of the Baikal seal which can be dangerous for their health and to a number of negative effects including growing rate of cancer among the local people.
The odor of methyl mercaptan, emitted by the mill, has long become a “calling card” of Baikalsk. The strong smell spreads around reaching areas as far as 70km from the town. Experts from the Siberian Institute of Physiology and Plant Biochemistry of the Russian Academy of Sciences say that 13 square kilometers of woods dried off and 350 square kilometers of woods irretrievably weakened by the BPPM air emissions.
An underground “lake” of polluted ground water has developed under the BPPM. The scientists call it an ecological time bomb.
The mill has accumulated millions cubic metres of solid waste (slime-lignin containing heavy metals: arsenic, cadmium, antimony, chromium, as well as chlorine organic chemicals) which are stockpiled in 14 slime ponds several hundred meters away from the lake.
For the 50-year period the government adopted over a dozen of resolutions to protect Lake Baikal, develop a system of efficient management of biological resources and stop the mill’s wastewater discharges and air emissions. None of the resolutions was even implemented.
On January 13, 2010, Vladimir Putin, prime-minister of the Russian Federation, signed Government Resolution №1 that read:
- the Baikal Pulp and Paper Mill is allowed to discharge waste into Baikal without restrictions;
- any waste is allowed to be stored, recycled and burnt on the shores of the lake.
Resolution No.1 contradicts the Russian and the international laws and violates the UNESCO World Heritage Convention.
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