Dmitry Tarasov, Chairman, Environmental Committee, Association of Commercial Sea Ports

- Extended meeting of the Environmental Committee involving specialists from all sea basins of Russia has been held for the second time. Today, among the crucial issues is the cooperation with the regulatory authorities in respect of compliance with the current legislation, review of changes planned for the regulatory framework. According to the opinion shared by the colleagues, the newly introduced norms should be feasible.

In my opinion, the key challenge today is to ensure coexistence of cities and ports, which to a great extent relates to designation of sanitary protection zones and revising of regulatory documents: living quarters are getting nearer to the long existing ports interfering with their activities and hindering their development. It is the prime issue with the rest being technically solvable.

The meeting traditionally featured several speakers focused on technological novelties for environment protection in the sphere of maritime transport such as introduction of special coating for hydraulic engineering structure. Special attention was paid by the meeting to treatment of stormwater runoff.

An urgent environmental problem in seaports is transshipment of coal. Throughout this year, we are to monitor application of the best available technologies in the segment of coal transshipment.

Besides, representatives of the segment companies agreed to take an active part in development of a so called ‘regulatory guillotine’ covering environmental activities in the sphere of maritime transport.

In general, I would like to emphasize that the Association members are inevitably committed to maintenance of environmental balance. For example, Passenger Port of Saint-Petersburg “Marine Façade”, which hosted the meeting, has been named The Most Environmentally-Friendly Company of Port Industry having won the competition in this nomination.

The next extended meeting is to be held in a year.
Transcript by IAA PortNews