Bashkiria may be included in "Clean Air" federal project by 2023

Bashkortostan may be included in the "Clean Air" federal project. The head of Rosprirodnadzor Svetlana Radionova, announced this at a meeting in the Sterlitamak administration on Wednesday, April 28.

The republic should do much preparatory work is needed to get into the project.

The region's application can be considered no earlier than 2023. As part of the Clean Air project, enterprises are required to establish open online monitoring of emissions. The Clean Air Program aims to create legal mechanisms that will oblige pollutants to reduce air emissions. Moreover, these mechanisms should affect all participants in the urban environment: business, state enterprises, and urban transport. Also, new observation posts will appear in the regions, and old stations will be modernized.

Representatives of environmental organizations at the meeting pointed out the need to increase the role of public inspectors and reported difficulties in obtaining data from laboratories on emissions of pollutants into the atmosphere.

Svetlana Radionova proposed making the results of environmental monitoring for the main emissions completely open and publishing them in the media and the weather forecast.

Public activists handed over to the head of Rosprirodnadzor a request to include large cities of Bashkortostan in the Clean Air federal project, which 18 thousand residents of the republic signed.

"The project is one of the most difficult to implement, but it is badly needed. If you get into the project, you will get a modern laboratory of Rosprirodnazor, a different quality of air monitoring," Svetlana Radionova said.

The Clean Air project, part of the Ecology national project, envisages a 20% reduction in total air emissions in 12 large industrial centers of Russia by 2024 (including Bratsk, Krasnoyarsk, Lipetsk, Chelyabinsk, Magnitogorsk, Nizhny Tagil, Norilsk, Cherepovets, and Chita). It is planned to spend 480.5 billion rubles for these purposes, including a little more than 100 billion rubles of budgetary funds.