Discharge (emission or effluent) limits for individual polluters are set in permits based on dispersion models so as to ensure compliance with EQSs. The excessive stringency of ELVs imposes technically impossible requirements and disproportionate economic costs. For example, an existing regulation in Russia stipulates that within the limit of urban areas, pollution characteristics of a treated effluent may not exceed EQSs for fishing-class water bodies. This implies that the EQSs should be lower than the quality of the discharge, requiring a level of treatment that goes far beyond the capabilities of presently available technology .Since overly stringent maximum allowable discharges are impossible to enforce, “temporary” (higher level) discharge limits are used in practice (even though they are not envisioned in the law in some countries, as in Ukraine) with a goal of step-by-step attainment of EQSs. These limits are negotiable between the enterprise and regional environmental authorities on a case by case basis is a part of the permitting process. Environmental agencies have wide discretionary powers and few guidelines for negotiating the temporary limits, which creates space for corruption. The system of temporary limits has not served its purpose. In many cases, the temporary (but routinely renewed) limits have been set at values close to actual pollution levels, yielding no incentive for pollution reduction.In summary, the system of overly stringent EQSs and ELVs in the NIS has clearly failed to provide the environmental quality it aspires: pollution in many “hot spots” continues to exceed standards several times over. In fact, it has produced the opposite effect to the one intended by the regulators by inducing noncompliance and perpetuating disrespect for the law.
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