In Russia, companies will be obliged to pay for the elimination of environmental harm: State Economy: Economy: Lenta.ru

The owners of industrial enterprises will be obliged to compensate for damage to the environment. The Russian government is completing the development of a corresponding bill. Deputy Prime Minister Victoria Abramchenko, who is in charge of ecology, said this at a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Her words are published by the Vedomosti newspaper.

If the law is adopted, legal entities, their founders and individual entrepreneurs will be responsible for the elimination of environmental damage after the decommissioning or conservation of facilities that had a negative impact on the environment, or during the liquidation or bankruptcy of their owners.

“We proceeded from the need to close the loophole for the owners of enterprises so that they would not abandon such industrial sites that have accumulated environmental damage,” the Deputy Prime Minister explained during a meeting on the elimination of environmental harm in the city of Usolye-Sibirskoye. According to her, the bill will be submitted to the government by the end of the year.

In addition, the draft law provides for a strict procedure for excluding enterprises from the state register of hazardous enterprises. This will require a conclusion on the absence of accumulated harm to the environment as a result of the actions of a particular enterprise, issued by Rosprirodnadzor. Also, industrial enterprises will be prohibited from dividing until environmental damage is eliminated.

Usoliekhimprom is an enterprise producing chlorine and other chemicals, which was declared bankrupt in 2017. All production activities at the Usoliekhimprom industrial site, where a large center of mercury pollution is located, was terminated in 2010. The soil, groundwater and underground waters on the territory of the enterprise are saturated with toxic pollutants and heavy metals.

how reported in August, the interim governor of the region Igor Kobzev, the elimination of the focus of the ecological disaster at the site of “Usoliekhimprom” in Usolye-Sibirskoye, Irkutsk region, will take place at the expense of the national project “Ecology”. The elimination of pollution is planned to be carried out until 2024, but the amount of funds that will be required for the activities is still unknown and will amount to “billions”.