System and levels of environmental monitoring

Environmental monitoring

For reasonable environmental protection management, the following are necessary:

1) monitoring of the state of the environment;

3) forecast of potential changes in the environment.

The listed components constitute the environmental monitoring system. Environmental monitoring is a system of observing changes in the state of the environment caused by anthropogenic factors, which allows for forecasting the development of these changes. The objects of monitoring are natural, anthropogenic, or natural-anthropogenic ecosystems.

Environmental monitoring is an organized system of observations that includes links of various levels: 1) Global (biospheric) monitoring, carried out on the basis of international cooperation.

Biospheric monitoring is carried out within the framework of the Global Environment Monitoring System (GEMS) on the basis of international biosphere stations, eight of which are located in Russia.

To conduct research within the framework of GEMS, aviation, space, and computing equipment are used. Aerospace methods are applied for the inventory and mapping of natural resources, monitoring of seasonal and long-term changes in the natural environment, tracking its composition and state, as well as the consequences of human economic activity. Aviation methods allow, for example, counting the population of certain species of livestock animals during migrations or aggregations. 2) National monitoring is carried out within the state by specially created bodies – services of the Ministry of Health of the Russian Federation, the Ministry of Natural Resources of the Russian Federation, Roshydromet, etc. 3) Regional monitoring is carried out within large regions intensively developed by the national economy, for example, within geosystems and territorial-industrial complexes. (West Siberian Territorial Center for Environmental Pollution Monitoring). 4) Local (bioecological) monitoring includes tracking changes in environmental quality within settlements, industrial centers, and directly at enterprises.

An example of local monitoring is a permanent system of observation and control of air pollution in cities and on transport highways, carried out with the help of stationary, mobile, or under-plume stations.

Local monitoring also includes the activities of sanitary-industrial laboratories at enterprises. The tasks of these laboratories include, in particular, constant observations of air pollution in workshops and industrial facilities, as well as water in established sections of water bodies.

Thus, for example, instrumental control of atmospheric air pollution in Tomsk is carried out at 6 stationary observation points of the Tomsk Center for Hydrometeorological Service and 2 points of the sanitary-epidemiological supervision. At 80 enterprises, monitoring of the main sources of atmospheric pollution is conducted by three specialized inspections of state environmental control, and 10 enterprises conduct departmental monitoring.

Environmental control of the state of the environment

The organization of control over the state of the environment in the regions is entrusted to local environmental authorities in the following areas: subsoil use, land resources, water bodies, atmospheric air, forest resources, wildlife, fish resources, and production and consumption waste.

State environmental control and reporting system

Based on the results of the control, administrative measures are applied to violators of environmental legislation, including fines and lawsuits, criminal cases are initiated, and the economic activity of facilities is suspended.

In the Russian Federation, as in almost all countries with a developed market economy, forms of statistical reporting on various types of activities of enterprises and organizations are established by law. In Russia, in accordance with the decrees of the State Statistics Committee, the following forms of state statistical reporting on environmental protection have been approved since 1993:

• 2-tp (air) "Report on atmospheric air protection";
• 2-tp (water) "Report on water use";
• 2-tp (reclamation) "Report on the reclamation of disturbed lands";
• 2-tp (toxic waste) "Report on the generation and disposal of toxic waste";
• 3-os "Report on the progress of construction of water-cooling facilities and cessation of the discharge of polluted wastewater";
• 4-os "Report on current expenditures on nature protection and environmental"

Environmental audit of production activities

Any reporting requires verification of its compliance with reality and current legislation. Currently, a rapidly developing field designed to control production practices and assess the compliance of the activities of enterprises and organizations with environmental legislation standards is the environmental audit.

Thus, an environmental audit is a type of activity consisting of analyzing the compliance of an enterprise's activities and reporting with current legislation, regulatory requirements, standards, internal programs, and environmental protection policies.

The goal of an environmental audit is to improve management in the field of environmental protection, assessment and reduction of risks associated with the use of raw materials and supplies, optimization of natural resource use, assessment of the enterprise's compliance with current legislative and regulatory documents, and the development of priority measures and long-term policy in solving environmental problems.

An environmental audit allows forming a correct idea of the enterprise's impact on the environment, helps to improve relations between nature users, supervised environmental authorities, and the population, achieve cost savings, collect data that will help management in making decisions on the modernization of production processes and equipment, and allows evaluating the effectiveness of environmental protection measures. Conducting an environmental audit is entrusted to territorial environmental authorities.

Environmental certification and production indicators

Indicators of the perfection of the technologies used and rational nature management are specific indicators of both the consumption of raw materials, fuel, and energy, and the emissions (discharges) of pollutants into the environment per unit of production.

One of the directions for stabilizing and improving the state of the natural environment is the development of a system of environmental certification for industrial and other facilities that are a source of environmental pollution. An environmental passport of an enterprise is a normative-technical document including data on the use of resources (natural, secondary, etc.) by the enterprise and an assessment of the impact of its production on the environment (GOST 17.0.0.04-90).

The development of an enterprise's environmental passport is aimed at solving four main tasks:

1) assessment of the environmental friendliness of production from the point of view of rational use of natural resources, namely the consumption of raw materials, energy, and natural resources, and the emission of pollutants per

2) assessment of the negative impact of the enterprise on the environment in terms of determining the gross amount of emissions, discharges, and solid waste over the accounting period and the volume of production;

3) presence and operational efficiency of treatment facilities and control over the implementation of measures to reduce the negative impact on the natural environment by levying payments from the enterprise for

The environmental passport is developed by the enterprise at its own expense. The main sections of the environmental passport are: - the integrated impact of the enterprise on the environment;

energy, water, land, and other resources; - technologies used at the enterprise; - balance of consumed raw materials and volume of manufactured products; - amounts of payments for nature management.

The layout of the enterprise's environmental passport is built on the basis of information contained in two blocks of regulatory documents. The first block includes documents limiting air pollution (maximum permissible emissions, permit for the emission of pollutants) and water pollution (maximum permissible discharges, permit for discharge into the industrial sewage system), and a permit for the removal and disposal of solid waste. They serve as a basis for inspections monitoring the environmental activities of enterprises. The second block includes documents on the rational use of natural resources. These are permits for water use, land use, land management, forest use, etc.

Environmental certification, therefore, shows enterprises the status and effectiveness of the environmental protection measures carried out there, and on the other hand, provides environmental authorities with a document in which information about the enterprise as a source of environmental pollution is concentrated for them to carry out control and inspection functions.