The regional division of Rostechnadzor (the state environmental watchdog) inspected the premises of Russian Chrome 1915, revealing 14 environmental offenses. This resulted in 17 orders describing steps that had to be taken, with strict deadlines.

One problem was that the company never had its hazardous waste certificates approved of by Rostechnadzor. Then, it turned out that the used Hg-lamps were not stored safely, and a twenty-liter vessel with the waste oil was simply put into the industrial waste container, Rostechnadzor’s press officer reports.

Some of the company’s sites were contaminated with oil products. Then, the enterprise had not paid its environmental and emission fees for the first quarter of 2007 in full. To make matters worse, it was proved to have exceeded the upper contamination limit for the nearby rivers and lakes.

Heads of the company’s two shops were brought to administrative responsibility for contaminating the soil with oil products; the company itself was prosecuted for failing to pay its emission fees in full and for dumping manufacturing water in the River Chusovaya. Rostechnadzor also demanded that Russian Chrome 1915 re-trains its experts and top executives in terms of environmental protection policies and conducts environmental audit. The company’s permit to dump a certain amount of waste in the local waters was cancelled. All the documents related to the inspection are to be placed with the regional public prosecution bodies.