Russian mining giant Nornickel announced on Sunday that it had suspended several of its employees responsible for dumping wastewater from one of its ore beneficiation plants in the Arctic into the wild.
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This new incident comes a month after an unprecedented episode of oil pollution in the same region.
Norilsk Nickel denounced, in a press release, “a flagrant violation of the operating instructions” on the part of the suspended employees.
The incident concerns the Talnakh enrichment plant, located near the Arctic city of Norilsk. The sewage, used to process minerals extracted from the region, “overflowed from a reservoir” on Sunday and spilled into the wild, the company said.
According to a source quoted by the Russian news agency Interfax, about 6000 cubic meters of liquid were spilled into the wild. The rejection lasted “several hours” and the rejection area is soggy, the same source said.
According to Nornickel, the release has been “stopped” by plant personnel and it poses “no threat of waste leakage”.
The services of the Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations on the spot, quoted by the public agency Ria Novosti, however, raised the risk of contamination of the nearby Kharaïakh River by toxic substances.
The Russian Investigation Committee confirmed in a statement a “unauthorized release of liquid waste into the tundra area” near Talnakh and announced the opening of an investigation.
The opposition newspaper Novaïa Gazeta For its part, it said that the plant intentionally illegally discharged wastewater into the wild and published images of the area. According to its local correspondents, Nornickel employees hastily dismantled the discharge pipes when investigators and emergency services arrived on site.
A spokeswoman for Nornickel, Tatiana Egorova, confirmed to AFP that the employees of the factory had taken the decision to “reject purified water from the tank” and that an internal investigation was under way.
According to the Russian environmental control agency Rosprirodnadzor, factory personnel made this decision following “heavy rainfall” which caused a “sharp increase in the water level in the settling tank”.
To “avoid possible emergency situations”, the employees decided to “discharge purified industrial water to the adjacent area” in the wild.
This is the second such incident in a month in the region: on May 29, 21,000 tonnes of fuel from the tank of a thermal power plant belonging to Nornickel spilled into the Ambarnaïa river and nearby land, tinting streams in purple.
President Vladimir Putin then declared a state of emergency in this region of the Russian Arctic rich in minerals and coal.
Authorities said on June 17 that they had completed the surface cleanup of the pollution, although the cleanup may take “years”.
Nornickel believes that this accident was probably caused by the thawing of permafrost – or permafrost – as a result of climate change, which would have caused the pillars supporting the tank to collapse.
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