The Federal Service for Environmental, Technological, and Nuclear Oversight (Rostekhnadzor) has confirmed that construction of the Boguchanskaya Hydro Power Plant violates existing laws. The key complaint against Russia’s largest investment project is that it hasn’t passed a state examination. It has become clear by now that RusHydro and Rusal, which are working together on completing Boguchanskaya by spring 2012, are not even going to submit to the procedure prescribed by law. For example, as long ago as September 23, 2010, Rostekhnadzor’s Yenisey branch ordered that Boguchanskaya HPP, in order to “fix the uncovered violations,” submit a state examination report on its design documentation (with a deadline set for 1 December 2010), as well as a building permit meeting the standards set out in the Civil Engineering Code (by 1 February 2011). Both deadlines have passed, but the order has not been complied with.

For a business that makes a living off of destroying the Angara River, burning down and flooding someone else’s homeland, direct orders that Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin gave to speed up Boguchanskaya’s construction in the aftermath of the Sayano-Shushenskaya HPP catastrophe are far more important. What does the law got to do with it? Professional work by two state inspectors from Rostekhnadzor’s Yenisey branch, V. Skidanov and V. Zavalishin, has been a sensation in and of itself and little short of a feat in this day and age. To make a long story short, they found that deviations from the Boguchanskaya’s original 1979 design have been made. This would be possible only if a new design was to be approved. The developer gave the green light to the new design only in 2009 (active work on Boguchanskaya’s completion had started three years prior. — A.T.). Despite this, “in violation of Article 48, part 15 of the Russian Federation Civil Engineering Code, the developer approved the design documentation without a positive opinion from a state examination board.” Not only that, but the design now includes structural changes that affect the facility’s reliability and safety, which is also subject to state examination under government decree No. 145 of 5 March 2007. Those are the inspectors’ key findings.

All this was revealed to the public thanks to the Plotina grass-roots organisation in Krasnoyarsk. Plotina’s leader, Alexei Kolpakov (who provided the documents to Novaya Gazeta), sent an inquiry to Yuri Abakumov, a deputy in the regional legislature, who referred the questions to Rostekhnadzor. On 22 February Deputy Head of the Yenisey branch Sergei Stupin, finally decided to send Abakumov the inspection documents. A month before that, Stupin frankly wrote: “The construction project’s client hasn’t submitted the amended design for main state examination, and, accordingly, the materials of the Environmental Impact Assessment done on the Boguchanskaya HPP (OVOS) have not been submitted either.”

Rostekhnadzor, of course, didn’t discover anything new. Work on the uncompleted, Soviet-era project started in 2006, and before that, on 15 August 2005. Novaya Gazeta wrote that the project was pernicious and that the Boguchanskaya HPP hadn’t passed a state environmental examination. Our newspaper has since raised this subject dozens of times. Environmentalists, the general public and long-time Angara residents – everybody was crying foul over the project’s catastrophic and unlawful nature. Everybody knew about it, and not knowing or hearing about it was impossible. Except then-President Putin, that is. He personally gave the go-ahead to complete Boguchanskaya, a decree lobbied for by special business interests and the Krasnoyarsk Governor Alexander Khloponin, now a deputy prime minister.

The publication of Rostekhnadzor’s findings coincided with two other developments, which are only superficially related to it. From 22 to 24 March, Krasnoyarsk will host the Plotina sponsored Rivers of Siberia Sixth International Conference. The list of participants includes more than 30 environment NGOs from Russia, China, Mongolia, and the United States, as well as the Siberian and Far Eastern branches of the Russian Academy of Sciences. A preliminary list of presentations already made public is intriguing and impressive. Invitations have been sent to everybody, including RusHydro, Rusal and the regional authorities.

This is a very important and much needed conference, especially for the region itself. The authorities should sit tight, listen up to the scientists and draw their conclusions. Indeed, many public entities and government departments have confirmed that they would participate. Unexpectedly, a regional government official, Deputy Economy and Development Minister Vyacheslav Zhgun, invited Kolpakov for a face-to-face meeting. Although all information about the conference is available online, the bureaucrat decided to meet the organiser personally. During their heart-to-heart chat, Kolpakov got the impression that he likely wouldn’t be allowed to hold the planned event after all. By pure coincidence, as soon as Kolpakov left the regional administration’s building, the Buzim country resort refused to accommodate conference participants, despite all the preliminary agreements. Kolpakov is perplexed: The Rivers of Siberia conference has convened five times in neighboring Tomsk and Novosibirsk without any problems.

But, of course, there’s little that is mysterious about this. And here’s one more related story for you.

An administrative probe conducted by the Anti-Trust Service could result in a fine of 1.3 billion roubles being imposed on Deputy Sergei Zyablov, Head of the Krasnoyarsk Territory Motorways Department, for overspending taxpayer money in favour of Transmost, a company owned by Governor Lev Kuznetsov. Transmost faces the exact same fine. As a matter of fact, Zyablov may be accused of breaking the law when conducting a public auction for motorway construction in Lower Angara (No. 22 of 02.03.2011).

The details are important here. Transmost was founded at a time when Kuznetsov was first deputy governor (spring 2006), to build bridges and roads under the Comprehensive Development of Lower Angara project (launched at about the same time), which brought about the Boguchanskaya HPP and future manufacturing facilities likely to be built nearby. As is a rule in the public auction business, the newborn limited liability company was named after St Petersburg’s Transmost, which was founded back in 1930.

We have seen this scenario many times before. After the Sayano-Shushenskaya disaster, Sechin said at a government commission meeting that the tragedy had been caused by a variety of factors. The reform of the electric power sector, of course, bore most of the blame, with specific accusations being leveled against people linked to only one entity, Gidroenergoremont, a part of RusHydro. This closed joint-stock company, co-founded by the power plant’s managers and their relatives, was in charge of repairing the Sayano-Shushenskaya’s equipment. Sechin accused them of fraud, pointing out that their company was winning public auctions thanks to “a fraudulently similar name” to Sayano-Shushensky Gidroenergoremont, a subsidiary of the power plant. By the way, this is a generally accepted business practice.

The new Transmost started winning auctions as well. Back in 2007, anti-trust officials complained to prosecutors about the way the tender commission awarded a project for a bridge across the Angara: Transmost won twice, despite the fact that they had never built a bridge before and offered to do so at a higher price than their rivals. The commission that made what would seem a strange choice only to an outsider included officials from the regional administration, the Motorways Department mentioned above, and the local branch of the Federal Security Service. Predictably, the scandal had no repercussions. This was followed by a criminal case (reported by Novaya Gazeta, No. 104 of 20.09.2010) over embezzlement of public funds on a particularly large scale.

It’s clear that the investigation, fraught with Russia’s record fines, will continue in court. This is likely to be fun: how do you bring charges against what Lower Angara is being developed for in the first place? The Boguchanskaya HPP, with its fourth dam on the Angara River, even though the existing capacities are, to put it lightly, excessive for the region, is being completed with multiple breaches of law, a fact now confirmed by Rostekhnadzor. To what end and whose benefit? Why run roughshod both over the law and human notions, why annihilate the Angara River and the livelihoods of its long-time residents? For the sake of the Boguchanskaya’s electricity consumers, perhaps? They might indeed appear at some point in the future. But the two key interests behind the project are promoting it for more down-to-earth reasons. The Chinese are interested primarily in the boundless resources that the Siberian coniferous forests have to offer, including famous Angara pine, while the well-coordinated conglomerate of
Russian bureaucrats and businessmen is interested in milking the cash cow as much as possible.

Why was this project put together so intricately and sophisticatedly? Novaya Gazeta wrote about this several years ago: NEMO (the Boguchanskoye Energy and Metals Association, comprising the Boguchanskaya HPP and an aluminum smelter) was managed by firms incorporated in Cyprus. RusHydro and Rusal, the two companies working together to complete the Boguchanskaya HPP, have transferred their stakes to this conglomerate. For example, the Boguchanskaya HPP itself was built by Boges Ltd, an offshore company parity co-owned by Rusal and RusHydro, which also raised financing for the construction.

So obstacles to the environmentalists’ conference were certainly to be expected. Keep in mind that last year, environmentalist protests helped stop the Evenkyskaya HPP project on the Lower Tunguska, a Yenisey tributary. The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) has joined in gathering signatures for suspending the Boguchanskaya construction. A coalition of environmental NGOs earlier called on banks (including Vnesheconombank and Sberbank) to freeze financing for RusHydro projects until an environmental examination of the Boguchanskaya HPP is completed. The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) has withdrawn from the project.

For the regional authorities and big business, who have merged in a “public-private partnership” over the Angara River, the people who defend the river and demand that laws be upheld are enemies. That’s what we have to live with: as soon as you start defending yourself, your convictions, your homeland or your freedom, you’re looking at being steamrolled or thrown in jail. This is a programmed, systemic tragedy.

The state inspectors, nevertheless, have issued their orders. The environmental examination procedure must be completed and public hearings must be held in the Krasnoyarsk territory and Irkutsk region.

In the meantime, the Boguchanskaya HPP is getting ready for launch. You’d think this is impossible without a Rostekhnadzor clearance. Think again.