Chinese company required to deal with dangerous environmental problem in Bor – New waste water collector necessary

The treatment of the collector at RTB Bor, whose breakdown would lead to a major environmental disaster, has been postponed since 2017, and the state budget features RSD 1.1 billion for the construction of a new waste water collector at the mines in Bor.

The budget plans RSD 250 million in 2019, RSD 600 million in 2020 and the remaining RSD 250 million in 2021.

Although there have been promises that the works will start in the past years, Beta learns that not even the feasibility study has been completed.

The memo sent last year, before the privatization and the arrival of the Chinese company Zijin, by the company to the Ministry of Mining says that “the entire floatation tailings pond, with the existing structures, is unsafe”.

– In order to increase safety and reduce the risk of an environmental disaster due to a potential breaking down of the tailings pond, the plan is to build a tunnel as a permanent solution for the regulation of the Kriveljska river – the memo says.

A year before, RTB said that it was ready to take upon itself the obligation of designing the new tunnel in full capacity, but that they expected a model for the transfer and the usage of the funds for the realization of the project defined within the state budget.

The new waste water collector should be around 6.3 kilometers long and should pass through the rock mass. Once it is built, the environmental problem will be solved permanently.

The president of the Municipality of Negotin, Vladimir Velickovic, emphasizes that the construction of a new collector at RTB Bor would eliminate the possibility of an environmental accident.

The current collector, in fact a tunnel for waste waters, which contain several million cubic meters of toxic matters, including arsenic, mercury, nickel and other heavy metals, spreads beneath the tailings pond of the Veliki Krivelj copper mine and is in a very bad condition.

Experts estimate that excessive precipitation could make the dam burst, in which case the floatation tailings would soon flood the villages downstream from the dam, but also a large part of Zajecar.

The wave of pollution would reach the Timok river in two hours and then end up in the Black Sea drainage basin in Bulgaria and Romania through the Danube.

Serbia Zijin Copper doo Bor

Zijin Mining Group Co Beijing

Ministarstvo rudarstva i energetike Republike Srbije

Opština Negotin

Rudarsko topionicarski basen Bor

RTB Bor

Vladimir Velickovic

treatment of RTB Bor collector

waste water collector

floatation tailings pond

heavy metals in Veliki Krivelj tailings pond