A member of the council under the head of Buryatia proposed amendments to protect Lake Baikal

The state could compensate local residents for living expenses in exchange for maintaining the cleanliness of the Baikal coastline. This was announced on September 27 by Galina Arsenyeva, a member of the public council of representatives of the Baikal regions under the head of Buryatia.

"No one will treat Lake Baikal as carefully as the local population does," she said in an interview with RBC.

Arsenyeva believes that such an initiative can help solve the problem of the "Baikal legal anomaly", when the special protected status of the lake and legal conflicts deprive local residents of the opportunity to own private property.

The problems with the legal status of Lake Baikal are related to the special legislation in force on the territory of the Central Ecological Zone of the Baikal Natural Territory. It prohibits the construction of new roads, sewage treatment plants, the expansion of cemeteries and other changes, which complicates the development of settlements. The situation concerns almost 140,000 people in the Irkutsk region and Buryatia, which, according to Arsenyeva, leads to an outflow of the population.

In addition, she also suggests reducing the territory of the ecological zone or removing some settlements from its borders. However, environmentalists believe that changing the boundaries of the zone may negatively affect the conservation status of Lake Baikal. They suggest looking for other ways to solve the problem by making changes to the legislation.

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On March 24, Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin said that Russian regions will be able to receive subsidies for the creation of sewage treatment plants near Lake Baikal. According to him, this initiative concerns two subjects — Buryatia and Irkutsk region. Mishustin also noted that the federal budget for the next three years provides over 9.5 billion rubles for the reconstruction and construction of sewage treatment plants near Lake Baikal.

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