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Detailed Review of Selected Non-Incineration and Incineration POPs Elimination Technologies for the CEE Region

Annex 1: Russian planning procedures for the establishment of elimination capacity

In the following, a brief discussion of the legal and regulatory requirements stated in official documents of the Russian Federation is outlined as an example of the number of proceedings a given POPs elimination technology must follow obtaining an operational certificate. On one hand, these requirements still have their roots in the USSR era and on the other hand they reflect present trends of the environmental cooperation between the 12 CIS countries. Thus, the requi-rements in the RF are to a certain extent similar to those existing or prepared in other CIS countries.

Introduction of a given technology for POPs elimination in the Russian Federation, like in other CIS countries, will have to follow requirements stated in a great number of legal and regulatory documents. The key documents for POPs elimination projects in the Russian Federation are the overall Law on Environmental Protection (2002) and the Law on the Environmental Expertise (1995). Similar laws exist in other CIS countries. There is also a mechanism for international environmental expertise within the CIS.

State environmental expertise
According to the laws, the projects related to development of new technologies, as well as projects of several other profiles in the CIS countries are subject to the procedure of the State Environmental Expertise, which assumes environmental impact assessment and presenting its materials to the state expertise together with other relevant documentation. There are 4 major participants of the EIA: (1) the client, (2) local authorities, (3) the public and (4) the state bodies for environmental expertise and other executive bodies.

1): The client is a legal entity or a person responsible for the organisation of the EIA (on their own or involving other legal entities and persons) and submitting the EIA materials and other documentation to the environmental expertise.

3): The public means one or several persons or legal entities, as well as organisations without legal status, except the client and other persons carrying out activities related to the considered project in accordance with their responsibilities prescribed by law or contractual relations with the client.

The EIA procedure is typically carried out in 3 phases:

  • Development of the EIA plan;
     
  • Preparation of the draft EIA materials; and
     
  • Preparation of the final EIA materials.

For investment projects (which the establishment of POPs elimination capacity would be regarded as) the client should perform these 3 phases at every stage of development of project documentation presented to the state environmental expertise. And the outputs of each phase are to be discussed with the public. The volume of the EIA materials typically should not exceed 200 pages. For particularly complex projects the materials could exceed 200 pages. Maps, drawings and other data could be presented as annexes to the materials.

In cases where the project documentation is classified and the public access can not be provided to all documents, only the environmental part of the materials is to be made available for all the participants of the EIA, including the public. According to the RF legislation, environmental information cannot be classified.

Other relevant laws and regulations
The document called "Regulation on licenses for hazardous waste management" (approved by the Resolution of RF Government No 556 of 20 May 1999) appoints the State Committee for the Environmental Protection (now integrated into Ministry of Natural Resources) and its territorial bodies as the offices providing licenses for management of hazardous waste and keeping the register of licenses. The routine for a license withdrawal is also specified.

The RF Law on protection of the Atmospheric Air (No. 96-FZ of 4 May 1999) contains among others the requirement regarding control of emissions during waste treatment and incineration. A set of international environmental standards in accordance with the ISO 14000 series is from 1999 introduced in the country as the national standards.

The Governmental Resolution No. 183 of 2 February 2000 specifies responsibilities for the establishing limits (maximum permissible/allowable impact on the atmospheric air, methods of control, type of sources under control) by the Ministry of the Natural Resources and the Ministry for Health Protection. The former is addressing the aspects other than affecting the human health, since the latter take care of this. The emission limits for a stationary source are provided by territorial bodies of the Ministry of Natural Resources based upon sanitary-epidemiological resolutions confirming compliance with the sanitary regulatory requirements.

The "Regulation regarding emission of harmful (polluting) substances into the atmospheric air and harmful physical impact on it" (approved by the RF Governmental Resolution No 183 of 2 March 2000), addresses inter alia the situation, when a legal entity, having sources of harmful (polluting) emissions, cannot meet the maximum permissible emission rates (MPER).

In this case, the territorial environmental authorities upon consultations with the sanitary/epidemiological authorities may establish a set of temporarily adapted emission rates (TAER). Although, doing so, they are to:

  • specify the time schedule for gradual decrease of emissions down to the maximum permissible rates;
     
  • submit the TAER to the authorities of the RF constituent (Oblast level) for approval; and
     
  • establish the TAER for the time period of gradual decrease of emissions down to the MPER and approve the decrease plan developed by the legal entity getting the TAER and responsible for the plan implementation.

The industrial safety control is the subject to the law on "industrial safety of the hazardous industrial facilities".

The RF "Law on sanitary-epidemiological wellbeing of the population" (No 52-FZ of 30 March 1999) describes the rights and responsibilities regarding, inter alia, collection and treatment of waste and regulation (setting the norms and sanitary rules, certification, state registration of substances and products, sanitary-epidemiological supervision, socio-hygienic monitoring).

The above listed key RF regulations must be followed in order to obtain any possibility for establishing possible POPs elimination capacity. In below, please find alternative routing (export) guidance.

Transboundary (transit) transport of hazardous waste (within the national obligations under the Basel Convention) is controlled in accordance with the joint Order of the Ministry of Natural Resources, Ministry for Health Protection, State Technical Supervision Board and State Customs Committee of the Russian Federation (No 787/396/256/910 of 31 December 1998).

Two Federal Target Programmes, one on dioxins/furans and the second on obsolete pesticides, assuming their country-wide inventories, were started in the Russian Federation in 1996. However, the financing was not sufficient for their completion, which still leaves RF in a position where large stocks of OP/POPs are stockpiled. Even in a country like Russia, counting for more than 100,000 tonnes of OPs products, no substantial elimination capacity has been established due to lack of finance, awareness on technical solutions and opportunities and political constraints.

Conclusively, a given POP elimination technology must be based on e.g. Russian outlined regulative procedures and in order to obtain operational permits, follow an extensive number of regulations and permissible routings. The fact that experiences with elimination of highly toxic chemicals is limited in the region, and no other conventional solutions like e.g. incineration of municipal waste in many Western European countries have "paved-the-road", not necessarily only for incineration technologies, but in general sense for performing elimination activities, makes it very difficult for any technology to penetrate the market platform in CIS and also the CEE Region.

The typical list of the EIA materials presented for the State Environmental Expertise of a project in CIS countries, is

  1. Front page:
    - The Client, its domicile and contact details;
    - Project title and location of implementation;
    - Name and contact details of a person, responsible for provision of further
    information regarding the presented documentation;
    - Type of the document in case of investment project (statement of
    intentions, appraisal/pre-feasibility study, feasibility study/design);
    - Specification of the document version (draft, final version, amendments);
    - Abstract of the document (one paragraph); and
    - Signature and stamp of the client.
     
  2. Brief (up to 15 pages) description of the work (executive summary) with its major conclusions; description of contradictions, including those identified during discussion; remaining problems, including choice of alternative solutions;
     
  3. Table of contents for the materials;
     
  4. Objective and purpose of the envisaged project;
     
  5. Description of project alternatives (alternative location of the site, technology and other options within the client's competence), including the proposed and the "zero" ("no-project") options;
     
  6. Possible contradictions of the envisaged project and its alternatives to the objectives of the national, regional or local policy regarding environmental protection and nature management, to the regulatory documents;
     
  7. Description of the elements of the environment which could be affected by the proposed project or its alternatives;
     
  8. Description and comparative analysis of possible types of environmental impact of the project and its alternatives and the impact scale;
     
  9. Description and comparison for the project and its alternatives of the direct impact (within the project area and during the project implementation) and of the indirect impact (taking place later and/or at some distance from the project area);
     
  10. Demand and availability of renewable natural and energy resources for the project and its alternatives;
     
  11. Impact mitigation measures for the project and its alternatives, including re-use of resources;
     
  12. Description of forecast techniques, background environmental data and assessment of the impact forecast reliability for the project and its alternatives;
     
  13. Identified information gaps and uncertainties in impact forecasts for the project and its alternatives;
     
  14. Brief description of environmental management and monitoring programs as well as post-project (decommissioning) analysis;
     
  15. Description of criteria and reasoning for the project option choice;
     
  16. Non-technical summary understandable for general public and accompanied with maps, charts, etc;
     
  17. Protocols of the public consultations of the materials including the following:

    17.1 Method of informing the public about the place and time of the public consultations;

    17.2 Place and time of the public consultations;

    17.3 List showing positions and contact details of representatives of the local authorities organising the public consultations;

    17.4 List of participants of the public consultations with the contact details of the organisations they represent or their private contact details (optional);

    17.5 Issues discussed in presentations by the participants of the public consultations and list of presentation abstracts (if they are provided by the participants);

    17.6 All the presented comments and suggestions with the specified names of the authors;

    Recording of the public consultations should be carried out and the records (hard copies, tapes) should be filed by the local authority which organised the public consultations.

    The minutes/protocol of the consultations should be prepared, signed by the secretary and chairman of the consultation meeting. It should be also signed and stamped by the representative of the local authority that arranged the consultations. The protocol should be within 10 days upon the consultations forwarded by registered mail to all the registered participants of the consultations.
     
  18. Overview of comments and suggestions received from the public and description of the mode of their reflection by the client or non-reflection with specification of reasons for non-reflection;
     
  19. Mailing list of the information forwarded to the public at all the stages of EIA;
     
  20. List of persons involved in preparation of the EIA materials;
     
  21. Mailing list for the final version of the EIA materials, including among others: (i) the ministries and other agencies and bodies, provided their co-approvals for the suggested project; (ii) the participants of the EIA presented their written comments on the draft materials;
     
  22. Index, and
     
  23. Annexes including only the materials prepared for the EIA of the project and its alternatives and the materials illustrating the conclusions upon the EIA.

    The Annexes are not distributed together with the set of materials. They are kept by the client and should be provided to the EIA participants upon request.

 

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Version 1.0 March 2005, © Danish Environmental Protection Agency