The Baikal is one of Russia's longest-established pulp-and-paper combines, and it is high time to update it-or close it down. The issue came under pointed debates at the ministerial conference.
Understandings were made back in the late 1990s, on which the combine proprietor was to modernize its filtering equipment, Natural Resources Ministry officers pointed out. The World Bank vouched then to allocate $22 million for the target program, another eleven million to come from the proprietor.
The program was shelved for years. Late last March, Continental Management spokesmen announced the company was again putting off project implementation to bring down Baikal pollution by the combine, the ministry says in a statement.
The Baikal Pulp-and-Paper Combine is, for today, an only industrial company to dump its liquid waste into the vast Siberian lake.
Baikal accounts for 20 per cent of the world's drinking water. The lake is one of the seventeen Russian cultural and natural objects on the UNESCO World Heritage list.
