State sets aside RSD 1 billion for construction of waste water collector at RTB Bor – Potential international environmental disaster

The Ministry of Mining has set aside RSD 1 billion in the next two years for the construction of a new tunnel for collection and disposal of waste waters from RTB Bor, Novosti learns.

The existing collector is located below several million cubic meters of toxic matters, such as arsenic, mercury, nickel and other heavy metals deposited in floatation tailings ponds on around 450 hectares.

The existing waste water tunnel below the Veliki Krivelj tailings pond is out-of-date and there's a danger, especially due to collector damage, of the dam bursting and the floatation tailings pouring out, which would cause an international disaster, Novosti reports.

According to estimates, the worst case scenario is for there to be excessive precipitation and for the dam to consequently burst, which would last around 2 hours, with a constant flow of 4,200 to 20,000 cubic meters of floatation tailings per hour. It would quickly flood the villages downstream and the majority of Zajecar. Through the river Timok, the wave of pollution would end up in the Danube river basin, in the section belonging to the Black Sea drainage basin in Bulgaria.

In 2010, an agreement was reached to repair the collector with a USD 30.9 million loan by the World Bank. The job was contracted and put in charge of a Dutch-Spanish consortium, but was suddenly given up on without a valid reason and the World Bank withdrew the loan agreement for Bor in 2014, Novosti reports.

Serbia Zijin Copper doo Bor

Ministarstvo rudarstva i energetike Republike Srbije

Svetska Banka-WB Beograd

tunnel for collection and disposal of waste waters from RTB Bor

waste water collector at RTB Bor

arsenic

mercury

nickel

floatation tailings ponds Bor

Veliki Krivelj

Danube

Timok

environmental disaster

pollution at RTB Bor