According to a new report, prepared by the Finnish Environment Institute by order of the Ministry of the Environment, the next largest source of nutrient load from Northwest Russia to the Gulf of Finland, after Saint Petersburg, are the other urban areas in the region. Almost one million people live in these other towns. In most of them there is still a lot to do to improve the wastewater treatment.
As was expected, the quantity of nutrients in the manure produced by animal husbandry is very large in Northwest Russia. It has been observed that nutrients run out of large poultry houses to watercourses. However, the load from animal husbandry on the Gulf of Finland is not alarmingly high because the major part of the manure is placed in restricted areas and not spread out to all fields of the region. More information is needed on the nutrient load from large animal units, particularly from cattle farms, and on possibilities to reduce the load.
The now available information will be used in a survey recently started by the Baltic Marine Environment Protection Commission (HELCOM) and the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency. The objective is to produce more information on the nutrient load from Northwest Russia and the Kaliningrad Oblast to the Gulf of Finland and the Baltic Sea. The international efforts to cut down the nutrient load will continue using the results of these surveys.
Finland joined the Project Preparation Fond of the Action Programme for the Baltic Sea
The Ministry of Environment supports water protection investments in several municipalities of the Leningrad Oblast, together with the Nordic Investment Bank and the Nordic Environment Finance Corporation (/NEFCO).
The Ministry of the Environment, NEFCO and NIB signed 21 September 2009 an agreement on the Project Preparation Fond for the action programme for the Baltic Sea. Finland has so far decided to invest 500 000 euro in the fond.
The purpose of the fond is to promote and speed up the measures that aim at reducing the eutrophication, particularly investments in municipal wastewater treatment and agriculture. The most cost-efficient way to reduce the nutrient load is to carry out such projects in non-EU countries and in new EU countries.
The fond will canalize funding to the projects from various sources, e.g. from international financing institutions and from local sources. The fond will particularly support projects in Russia, Belarus and Ukraine but also in the Baltic countries and in Poland.
Report:
Identification of Priority Measures to Reduce eutrophication from North-West Russia into Gulf of Finland (pdf, 2.673 kb)
More information
Ms Kristiina Isokallio, counsellor, Ministry of the Environment,
phone +358 50 581 9618, firstname.lastname@ymparisto.fi
Mr Jouni Lehtoranta, research specialist, Finnish Environment Institute, phone +358 400 148 532 firstname.lastname@ymparisto.fi
