Paper mill 'polluting' Lake Baikal finally closes, but at a human cost

Most have no jobs to go to, though there are hopes in time that tourism on the shores of the world's deepest lake will create employment. The Soviet-era plant was built in the 1960s and has been a long-time target of environmental critics. The lake is internationally known as one of the planet's treasures.

Finally, after many false-stops, the plant now looks set to close though 700 workers will man the heating plant for the town of Baikalsk which is run  by the mill. The plant was shut five years ago only to be reprieved by premier Vladimir Putin, now president. 

Workers say they are being paid off as the harsh Siberian winter begins to grip. 

'Nobody is offering workers any other jobs. There are no other industries in the town, there are only 100 openings, all for low-paying jobs,' union boss Yury Nabokov told AFP. 

'Five years ago the government promised to retrain workers, but it never happened. Nobody proposed anything to the employees, we are hanging over the abyss of poverty and unemployment'.

Halting the plant does not necessarily mean an immediate ecological bonanza. Local environmental NGO Baikal Environmental Wave said the plant now must figure out what to do with the decades' worth of toxic waste stored around it, which consists of about six million tonnes of sludge lacerated with chlorine, reported AFP.

'There are 14 tanks, each one of them the size of several football fields,'  said Maksim Vorontsov, an employee of the group based in Irkutsk.

The plant's shutdown was long expected since the plant had been loss-making for years, he added. 'Relaunching it wasn't worth it. For three years it was limping on both legs, and now it's firing people right before winter. It's not a socially responsible approach.'