New Measures to Protect the Environment

CPSU Central Committee and the USSR Council of Ministers, On Additional Measures to Intensify Conservation and Improve the Utilization of Natural Resources. December 1, 1978

 

Original Source: Pravda and Izvestiia, 6 January 1979, p. 1.

Certain USSR ministries and departments are not paying proper attention to the development and introduction of low-waste technological processes and closed-cycle water-use systems. A number of enterprises have not been outfitted with gas-scrubbing and water-purifying units and appropriate monitoring instruments.

Some ministries and departments are not taking the necessary steps for the re-cultivation of land, and the USSR Ministry of Agriculture and the Union-republic Councils of Ministers are not exercising proper supervision over the timely implementation of this work. The national economy suffers considerable damage from soil erosion. There are shortcomings in the organization of nature-reserve work and the protection of the animal and plant world.

The USSR Academy of Sciences and the Union-republic Academies of Sciences have not done all they could to organize basic research on a number of unresolved conservation Problems.

The resolution provides for steps to intensify state supervision over the implementation of conservation measures and to eliminate as soon as possible existing shortcomings in work on the rational utilization of natural resources and the improvement of environmental conditions. It is pointed out that the USSR ministries and departments, the Union-republic Councils of Ministers and associations, enterprises, institutions and organizations bear full responsibility for conservation, the rational utilization and reproduction of natural resources and the timely implementation of appropriate conservation measures. At the same time, special attention is directed to the creation of technological processes and equipment that reduce industrial and other harmful discharges into the environment.

The Union-republic Communist Party Central Committees and the territory, province, city and district Party committees have been instructed to intensify supervision over the fulfillment by economic agencies, enterprises, institutions and organizations of Party and government decisions and USSR laws on questions of conservation and the rational utilization of natural resources.

With a view to further improving the state system of observing and supervising the condition of the natural environment and the level and sources of its pollution, the USSR State Committee on Hydrometeorology and the Environment has been assigned: responsibility for the organization and activity of the state system of observing and supervising the condition of the natural environment, the regulation of air use in cities and industrial centers, and the exercise of state supervision over sources of air pollution and the drafting and observance of norms for maximum emissions of pollutants into the atmosphere; and the task of examining plans for the location of industrial and other facilities and designs for the construction and reconstruction of such facilities that are submitted for coordination by ministries and departments, insofar as they concern the observance of requirements for the prevention of atmospheric pollution.

The USSR State Committee on Hydrometeorology and the Environment and its local agencies have been given the right to check on the observance by enterprises, institutions, organizations, construction projects and other facilities, regardless of their departmental affiliation, of norms and rules in the field of atmospheric protection, and also to submit proposals on suspending the operation of industrial facilities that are violating established norms until the necessary measures have been carried out.

The USSR State Committee on Hydrometeorology and the Environment, the USSR Ministry of Land Reclamation and Water Resources, the USSR Ministry of Agriculture and the USSR Council of Ministers, Committee for the Supervision of Industrial Safety and for Mine Supervision have been assigned the duty of exercising supervision over the fulfillment by associations, enterprises, institutions and organizations of appropriate conservation assignments established by state plans for the economic and social development of the USSR.

For the purpose of establishing comprehensive conservation measures, preventing the pollution and degradation of the natural environment and ensuring the most effective utilization of natural resources in the national economy, it has been deemed necessary to draw up comprehensive territorial conservation plans. Insofar as the observance of conservation measures is concerned, the USSR State Construction Committee has been instructed to make changes in the normative documents currently in effect for the designing and construction of various facilities.

The resolution provides for the development and implementation of a complex of measures for the introduction of low-waste technological processes, as well as systems for decontaminating, processing and treating gaseous, liquid and solid industrial, municipal and domestic wastes. USSR ministries and departments and the Union-republic Councils of Ministers have been instructed to ensure the development and putting into series production of equipment and pipeline fittings for water supply systems and sewage- treatment installations, the production of instruments and devices for automating the process of monitoring the pollution of the natural environment, and the construction and commissioning of plants for the manufacture of gas-scrubbing and dust-trapping equipment and apparatus and spare parts for this equipment.

The USSR Ministry of Land Reclamation and Water Resources and the USSR Ministry of Power and Electrification, in conjunction with the USSR Ministry of the Fish Industry, are to develop and manufacture models of highly effective fish screens for water-intake systems.

In view of the limited nature of peat resources, the water-regulating role of peat bogs and the necessity of preserving peat resources for the needs of agriculture, the Union-republic Councils of Ministers, with the participation of the USSR Ministry of Agriculture and the USSR Ministry of Geology, have been instructed to take steps to improve the use of peat deposits and to convert thermal power stations in the European USSR that now burn peat to other types of fuel.

To prevent geological-prospecting and surveying work, industrial construction and transportation operations from having an adverse effect on the natural environment of the tundra zone and the BAM (Baikal-Amur Main Line] construction zone, it is planned to implement a complex of conservation measures in these zones.

The USSR ministries and departments that extract and process useful minerals are to take steps to prevent spoil banks of overburden and enclosing rock from having an adverse effect on the natural environment and work out and implement measures for the upgrading and re-cultivation of old spoil banks.

The Union-republic Councils of Ministers, the USSR State Construction Committee, the USSR State Committee on Hydrometeorology and the Environment and the USSR ministries and departments have been instructed to intensify their supervision over the designing and construction of new enterprises and installations and the reconstruction of existing ones insofar as the observance of rules for protecting the natural environment against pollution by harmful discharges is concerned, and also to ensure, in designs for the construction and reconstruction of enterprises and installations, the wide-scale use of low-waste technologies, water-free technological processes, recycling and closed-cycle water-supply systems, sewerage and other progressive methods of protecting the environment from pollution.

The USSR State Construction Committee and the USSR State Committee for Science and Technology are to expand research and experimental-design work on protecting residential areas of cities and other communities from industrial and transport noise.

The resolution provides for the orderly restructuring of the network of research organizations dealing with conservation and the rational utilization of natural resources and problems of the biosphere and low-waste technology, as well as for the expansion of technical and economic research on these questions. It has been deemed necessary to draw up draft model statutes on state nature reserves, natural monuments, botanical gardens, zoological and dendrological parks, preserves and nature (national) parks.

The Union-republic Councils of Ministers have been instructe0oto give the republic conservation societies assistance in exercising public supervision over the implementation of conservation legislation, in disseminating knowledge about conservation and the rational utilization and reproduction of natural resources, and also in reinforcing these societies with skilled specialists and supplying them with the necessary material and technical resources.

The CPSU Central Committee and the USSR Council of Ministers have deemed it advisable that, when the results of socialist competition among enterprises and organizations are summed up, it be mandatory to consider their fulfillment of conservation plans and measures and their observance of norms and rules for the utilization of natural resources and the treatment and processing of production wastes …

It has been deemed advisable to publish a popular-science magazine called Nature and Man.

Source: Current Digest of the Soviet Press. Vol. XXXI, No. 1 (1979)

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