Protesters rally against Lake Baikal's mill operations
Reporting by Denis Pinchuk; Writing in Moscow by Lidia Kelly
ST. PETERSBURG, Russia
Sat Mar 27, 2010 10:22am EDT Around 200 people gathered in St. Petersburg, thousands of kilometers away from the lake, demanding to revoke the government’s January decision to restart Baikal Paper Mill. Another 500 rallied closer to Baikal, which holds a fifth of the world’s total surface fresh water, in the city of Ulan-Ude in the Buryat Republic, according to the organizers. The loss-making Soviet-era factory was shut in October 2008 after the government ordered it to install a system for drainage away from the lake. Environmentalists and politicians have staged several protests in recent months, saying the waste from the plant contains harmful substances that destroy the lake’s rich wildlife of 1,500 species of animals and plants. “Putin – hands off Baikal” read a banner displayed at the St. Petersburg rally. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin signaled in August his willingness to lift the restrictions that prevented the plant from dumping waste into the lake after diving to the bed of the lake and consulting with scientists. “I worked myself in a paper producing industry,” Grigory Borisov, a 45-year-old engineer from St. Petersburg told Reuters. “I know that Baikal is getting polluted and no purifying facility will save the lake.” …
