Russia rules China-backed Baikal bottling plant ‘illegal’
A Russian court on Wednesday ruled that a widely-condemned China-backed project to bottle water from Lake Baikal illegally received the go-ahead from authorities.
The plant currently under construction to bottle the waters of the world’s largest lake has proved highly controversial, exacerbated by popular fears of a Chinese land-grab in Siberia.
A judge at a district court in the Siberian city of Irkutsk ruled that the official permit for the plant’s construction was illegal,
The ruling came after a petition against the plant on Change.org gathered more than a million signatures.
The water will be shipped to China, the petition said, warning that the facility would block local access to the lake and inflict irreparable damage to the UNESCO World Heritage Site.
The plant’s financial backing comes from a company called Baikal Lake based in China’s Daqing.
The plant was initially welcomed by the Irkutsk authorities in 2017, when they gave the $21-million project priority status.
JIJI PRESS
https://jen.jiji.com/jc/i_afp?k=20190401038440a
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