The Russian government is completing the development of a bill that will oblige the owners of industrial enterprises to compensate for damage caused to the environment.
During a video conference with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday, November 26, on the progress in eliminating environmental damage in Usolye-Sibirskoye (Irkutsk region), Deputy Prime Minister Victoria Abramchenko spoke about what changes in legislation will prevent business from evading compensation payments in the future …
“We proceeded from the need to close the loophole for the owners of industrial enterprises, which allows them to abandon such enterprises without eliminating the harm and decommissioning,” she said.
At the same time, she noted that financial responsibility rests with the owner, regardless of whether he is the person who caused this harm or not.
The bill will be submitted to the government by the end of the year.
Earlier that day, Putin announced that he intended to keep the situation in Usolye-Sibirskoye under personal control. According to the head of Rosatom, Alexei Likhachev, work to eliminate the consequences of emergency situations continues ahead of schedule, and their cost in 2021-2024 will amount to 48.5 billion rubles.
In early August, Vladimir Putin signed a decree on the allocation of funds from the federal budget to solve environmental problems in Usolye-Sibirskoye, where an emergency regime was introduced in 2018 in connection with a threat of an emergency situation on the territory of the Usoliekhimprom LLC industrial site.
This enterprise produced trichlorethylene, epichlorohydrin, metallic sodium, calcium carbide, hydrogen peroxide and other chemicals. Production was stopped in 2010 due to the bankruptcy of the company. At the same time, the enterprise did not fulfill its obligations to eliminate the accumulated harm to the environment.