Pollution of Lake Baikal

The media reported that the State Duma has finally adopted the scandalous bill in the third reading, allowing clear-cutting of forests on Lake Baikal.

This initiative is more than controversial, environmentalists and public figures are actively fighting against it. Since the document contains "potentially dangerous anti-ecological decisions for the Baikal natural territory", which in the future can lead to irreparable consequences.

But, as it soon turned out, another bill was adopted, at first glance, similar. Experts believe that the confusion could not have happened by chance.

"The fact is that the first bill, which was adopted in the third reading, only talks about a small strip of forest along the BAM route under construction," Nikolai Buduyev, a State Duma deputy from the Republic of Buryatia, commented on the situation for MK.

According to him, this law simply extends until December 31 2033 the norm on the possibility of logging in the central ecological zone of the Baikal natural territory to expand the Baikal-Amur and Trans-Siberian railways.

“The remaining forests that are already in the alienation zone of the existing railways will be cut down. There is not a very large area there. But the bill on clear-cutting, excuse me, concerns nine million hectares of forest. In my opinion, this is already an openly anti-Baikal project,” the parliamentarian believes.

It turns out that in one case we are talking about extending the deadlines for the construction of the BAM infrastructure. But the second law being prepared concerns a radical change in the norms of the legal protection of the lake as a whole, and, as experts say, without scientific justification and an assessment of the possible consequences of this. Now the initiative is awaiting a second reading.

There is no exact information yet about when the second bill will be considered.

After almost a year-long break in the discussion of a high-profile bill proposing to allow logging in the central ecological zone (CEZ) of the Baikal natural territory, the expert council of the Duma Committee on Ecology and the inter-factional working group “Baikal” prepared the concept of amendments for the second reading.

Thanks to the wide response,  several extremely dangerous norms for Lake Baikal were removed from the bill, which may now be returned. Thus, lifting the ban on sanitary clear-cutting in the Central Ecological Zone of the Baikal Natural Territory is again being discussed.

Their public discussion will take place after June 10 at a meeting of the expert council and working group. This was reported to Vedomosti by an interlocutor close to the State Duma Committee on Ecology, and confirmed by four sources: one from this committee, three familiar with the course of discussion of the bill.

The average concentration of microplastics in the lake has increased 1.5 times in the last five years. Today, its concentration is hundreds of thousands of particles per square kilometer.

Ecologists sound the alarm about the excessive load of tourists on the lake - every year more than a million people come to Baikal. Over the past 5 years, the number of tourists on Baikal has increased even more, due to which the irreparable damage to the lake has increased manifold, and, accordingly, household waste, illegal dumps and plastic in the water are becoming more and more numerous. There is a lot of trash on the tourist beach. Abandoned vodka and beer bottles, tin cans, plastic bags that have already merged into one unit with the coastal sand, and a huge amount of cigarette butts.

In 2020, the prosecutor's office found violations in 90% of the tourism facilities at Baikal. Most of the tourist facilities and guest houses on the lake shore were operating without observing the environmental legislation.

The Russian government has authorized logging and development of pristine natural areas on Lake Baikal, as well as water protection zones within settlements, by publishing a new list of unacceptable activities. 
This is what big corporations and land and real estate speculators, who have been actively lobbying for their interests in recent years, want. There were legal and semi-legal constructions on the shores of Lake Baikal before, but the changes in the legislation made it much easier to develop new, untouched territories. The list doesn't even include a ban on construction in the habitats and growth areas of rare and endangered animals and plants.

The degree of pollution in the deepest lake has not yet received a critical mark but is already approaching it. The measures taken for 2018-2019 are not enough, as the situation is only getting worse. Solutions largely depend on the ecological culture of society and state policy - not only in Russia but also in countries related to the lake.

On the eastern shore of Lake Baikal, in the area where the Selenga River flows into it and Tankhoi cape, the maximum permissible concentration (MPC) of heavy metals - zinc, copper, lead - was found to exceed two or three times. These substances are carried into the lake and mixed with water, they are presented in high enough concentrations, even exceeding the maximum allowable concentrations.

According to scientific data, it is no longer possible to remove all microplastics from Baikal water. And not only because it has been carried out of Lake Angara for many years. Some microplastic particles practically do not become overgrown with algae, like the thinnest filamentous fibers from the composition of synthetic clothing, and particles with a flattened configuration or even fragments of plastic nets are quickly overgrown with them.
 Microplastics are fragments of plastic less than 5 mm in size. It is environmentally destroyed plastic, and it is primarily a marker of human activity.

The Baikalsk Pulp and Paper Mill was closed in 2013. Before that, for almost 50 years it had been poisoning the lake and the surrounding nature. Dust and gas emissions from the mill hurt the taiga, tree tops were dying off, and nearby forests were drying up. High levels of dioxins - dangerous poisons for any living organisms - were found in the bottom sediments near the wastewater discharge area. In the area of the mill in Baikalsk town, dioxin pollution was 40-50 times higher than in the northern and central parts of the lake.