The meeting of representatives on the regulation of Lake Inari was held in Norway

The meeting of representatives from Russia, Finland, and Norway on the co-regulation of Lake Inari water management was held on 12 February 2019 in Karasjok in northern Norway. Russia was represented by Gennady Semenov, Deputy General Director for Marketing and Sales of TGC-1, Stanislav Nazarov, Director of the Kolsky Branch of TGC-1, and Nikolay Vorobyev, Director of the Paz HPPs Cascade.

At the meeting, the Protocol for the Regulation Meeting of Lake Inari, as well as the Admission Programme up to 30 June 2019 with an account of HPPs maintenance was approved. Power engineers and environmental experts paid attention to climate change issues. The participants of the meeting visited Sami Parliament (Sametinget) and Riddo Duttoar Museummi.

"Meetings of the trilateral commission on the regulation of Lake Inari allow to quickly solve the issues arising in the course of the challenging hydropower complex. The main tasks include the development and monitoring of water discharge schedules and coordination of equipment repairs at Russian and Norwegian hydropower plants. We are united by the key and common goal which is to minimise the impact on the Inari ecosystem. It is necessary to thoroughly study environmental forecasts, monitor climate change, and jointly develop optimal operating modes of hydropower plants to preserve the biodiversity of Finland's largest reservoir," Gennady Semenov noted.

Reference

The trilateral agreement on Lake Inari water management by means of Kaitakoski HPP was signed in 1959 between the governments of the USSR, Norway, and Finland. The subject of the agreement was water level control in Lake Inari, located on the territory of Finland, and in Paz River, flowing out of the lake and passing through the territory of Finland, Russia, and Norway.

The river has seven hydroelectric power plants, five of them are combined into the Paz HPPs Cascade of TGC-1 and the rest two are a part of the energy complex of Norway.