Eastern Europe February 12, 2010, 1:30PM EST

A Setback for Russia's Lake Baikal

The world's deepest lake enjoyed environmental protection from Vladimir Putin until his shock decision to reopen a polluting paper mill controlled by Oleg Deripaska

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Four years ago, Vladimir Putin surprised environmentalists by saving Lake Baikal from an oil export pipeline that would have run within a kilometer of its northern shore. The Russian president announced on national television an abrupt pipeline diversion 40 kilometers farther north that would cost state-owned Transneft nearly $1 billion. Pointing a red pen at Lake Baikal on a giant map, Putin said, “If there is even the smallest, the tiniest chance of polluting Baikal, then we must think of future generations and we must do everything to make sure this danger is not just minimized, but eliminated.”

Last month, with the stroke of a pen, Prime Minister Putin reversed an environmental victory by allowing the major source of direct industrial pollution to Lake Baikal to resume operation. A governmental decree changing the list of activities prohibited in a protected zone near the lake was issued in order to allow the Baikalsk Pulp and Paper Mill (a unit of Continental Management), which closed in 2008, to resume production. Environmentalists in the Baikal region were shocked, seeing their victory in a 44-year battle to close BPPM slip from their grasp.

The Russian environmental movement began in the 1960s with a strong campaign to protect the unique ecosystem around Lake Baikal in southeast Siberia. The deepest freshwater lake in the world, Baikal plunges to depths of more than 1,700 meters. These deep waters are teeming with life, with most of its roughly 1,500 species endemic to the Baikal watershed.

While Baikal has been intermittently threatened over the years, these threats have afforded notable victories for the environmental movement. In 1996, Lake Baikal was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO, offering the ecosystem the protections of the World Heritage Convention (ratified by Russia in 1988). A list of prohibited activities was created in 2001 to add further protection to the Central Ecological Zone of Lake Baikal.

In 1987, it was announced that BPPM would be closed in 1993, but this promise was lost amid the general disarray of the Soviet Union’s collapse.

Protests in 2006 over the proposed construction of the Eastern Siberia-Pacific oil pipeline within Baikal’s watershed led to Putin’s intervention to reroute the pipeline. In 2008, the Baikalsk paper mill attempted to implement an environmentally friendly closed water system after Rosprirodnadzor (the Federal Service for Natural Resources) sued the mill for exceeding government standards for levels of pollutants in Baikal’s water. A representative of the agency flew to Baikal to oversee the transition to the new system in October 2008, after which the company deemed the switch unprofitable and shut its doors.

While the controversy over the factory’s closing persisted into early 2009, the local government remained firm in its pledge to keep it closed.

Yet as environmentalists rejoiced in their long-awaited victory, the town of Baikalsk suffered the negative consequences. The global economic crisis hit Russia at the same time as the closing of the factory in the fall of 2008. The paper mill’s 2,000 workers lost their jobs with the closing. At first, the newly unemployed workers in Baikalsk held protests, most to demand unpaid wages and severance pay. Some have since found jobs elsewhere while others continue to look for work. Other options for the remaining jobless workers have been discussed, including bolstering local ecotourism or building an alternative factory outside the Central Ecological Zone with a cleaner production cycle.

Why did Putin decide, 15 months later, to allow the mill to reopen without limit to its effluent for the next three years? The technology in BPPM is outdated, and it will take years and substantial investment to bring the plant up to modern standards.