Languages

Putin voices concern over great lakes Ladoga, Onega

Lake Onega and the neighboring Lake Ladoga are seriously polluted, the authorities say.

The deteriorating environmental situation in the Ladoga and Onega lakes could affect the provision of drinking water to major parts of Northwest Russia, the President says.

Location

Speaking in this week`s session in Russia`s National Security Council, Putin raised the alarm about the situation in the two huge lakes. According to the president, the deteriorating water quality in both the Ladoga and the Onega could ultimately give the whole Northwest Russian region problems with drinking water supplies.

“This issue has to be addressed both on the federal and the regional levels”, Putin stressed, a meeting transcript reads.

The Ladoga and Onega are the two biggest lakes in Europe with their surface areas of respectively 17,700 km2 and 9,700 km2. Both are located in the Republic of Karelia.

The top-level focus on the two lakes comes after regional environmental authorities repeatedly have voiced concern about the situation. According to the Karelian branch of the Russian State Environmental Control Authority a key reason for the problem is sewage waters from the nearby towns and villages. Commenting on the situation, leader of the control authority Aleksandr Shiplin says that a significant number of the cleansing facilities is either not functioning properly or not functioning at all, resulting in major volumes of sewage running directly into the waterways. In regional towns like Kem and Belomorsk there are no cleansing at all, he adds to newspaper Respublika.

The situation is aggravated by discharges from surrounding industry, including from the Petrozavodsk Oil Base. According to the Environmental Control Authority, the Oil Base every year discharges about 50,000 cubic meters of polluted waste waters to Lake Onega. The company in 2012 paid a 190,000 ruble (€4200) fine for the pollution and a new fine is in the pipeline for 2013, Respublika informs.

The situation in the two northwest Russian lakes is expected to be subjects of focus in the new Russian Environmental Security Strategy, a document due to come into force in the course of 2014.