Everybody visiting Lake Baikal for the first time is offered a glass of water straight from the lake. At the Baikal restaurant, lake water is served as a local speciality.
Visitors can look down through water 70 feet deep and count the stones on the bottom.
The water’s mineral content is very low. In this crystal-clear water some 150 types of plants and fish live — many of them found nowhere else in the world.
There have been many discussions on Lake Baikal in the USSR. Some scientists have demanded that Baikal — 6,360 feet deep — should be preserved completely as it is as a wonder of nature.
Others wanted to use this giant reservoir — it contains one fifth of the world’s resources of fresh water — for economic purposes. The arguments still go on, and there are many points of detail still in dispute. But the Baikal timber processing plant has proved that a factory can return its “waste» water to the lake quite pure, if it uses modem filtering techniques.
The Academy of Sciences and the State Planning Committee have prepared a plan to make the southern shore of Baikal into a natural park, with camps and tourist centers for 25,000 guests within the next few years.
Vocabulary
timber processing plant — деревообрабатывающий завод (комбинат)
filtering techniques — очистные сооружения
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