The Serbian government has suspended the project of rehabilitation 450 hectares of mining bare lands in the municipality of Bor with favorable loans from the World Bank. Since 2007 over three million dollars has been spent on its implementation since 2007, Beta news agency finds out.
In response by the Secretary of State from the Ministry of Natural Resources, Mining and Spatial Planning, Tomislav Šubaranović to Bor environmental NGOs it was said that the loan for revitalization was stopped because it was estimated that the loan money “was not sufficient”.
About $ 35 million was planned for the revitalization.
Šubaranović therefore proposed that due to the high price of copper, instead of revitalizing the bare lands that have been contaminating crops of Bor citizens for decades, the tailings should be put back into the production process, because it was established that it contains a certain amount of copper.
The tailings are a material that is left in the process of obtaining copper concentrates.
“In order to find a strategic partner who can extract copper from the tailings in an environmentally safe way, the Serbian government has announced a public invitation to bidders who are ready for this job. The future strategic partner will also have to commit to finance the revitalization after the bare lands have been exploited” said Šubaranović.
Several NGOs from Bor requested the revitalization of the bare lands because harmful substances from it are polluting the environment.
According to the results of the samples obtained by experimental drilling carried out by a Dutch company Witteveen – Bos, some experts doubt the viability of the exploitation of tailings for copper.
“During the past year and a half Witteveen – Bos did the preparatory work for the project to be technically acceptable, a study on the assessment of the impact on the environment was done and documentation for this project was prepared,” the project coordinator, engineer Alexander Budjelan told the reporters earlier.
According to the data presented so far about three million dollars was spent on the realization of the project, and the tender for the selection of the contractor is completed.
Source Serbia Energy Magazine