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BSAG met Russia’s Minister for Natural Resources and Environment Sergey Donskoy in Helsinki

The Minister for Natural Resources and Environment Sergey Donskoy and BSAG discussed especially about the opportunities that the St. Petersburg Baltic Sea Forum in April has opened.
Among others the topics were the replacing of the Krasny Bor hazardous waste dump with an appropriate waste disposal plant, building an international oil spill response center in St. Petersburg, standardizing the indicators of the monitoring of the Baltic Sea and the completing  the new wastewater plant in Kaliningrad.
Minister Donskoy also announced that the federation gives its full support to the St. Petersburg Vodokanal’s Baltic Sea Commitment to build and renovate the water treatment plants in the areas of Leningrad and Karelia. Also it became clear that Russia invests in the production of liquefied natural gas (LNG) and that manure will be used as the source for the gas.
Minister presented that the vessel traffic service GOFREP, which works on the bay of Finland, should be expanded to concern the whole Baltic Sea area.
The arrangements of the new St. Petersburg Initiative were in the discussions. “The direct link with the Russian Ministry of Natural Resources is a valuable in the work of  gaining a good ecological status for the Baltic Sea ”, said Mathias Bergman Secretary General of BSAG after the meeting. “The commitments and initiatives from St. Petersburg Baltic Sea Forum are now taken further”.
The next time the Ministers for the Environment from the Baltic Sea countries will be dealing with the Baltic Sea issues, is in the Ministerial Meeting of HELCOM in October 2013. The St. Petersburg Initiative, which has a planning group consisting of the head of the St. Petersburg Vodokanal Felix Karmazinov and the BSAG’s Chairman of the Board Ilkka Herlin, will also be on the agenda of the Ministerial Meeting.
The Minister Donskoy visited Finland 10-13.8.2013 invited by the Finnish Minister for the Environment Ville Niinistö.​

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