''I want to breathe", almost half of the region’s residents are against the project, and fear the environmental impacts. Photo: Vk.comDespite the open protests by ecologists and locals, it seems the Tomino copper mining complex is going ahead. This month, Russia’s largest extractor of copper ore received permission to build in the Chelyabinsk region, in the southern Urals. The project’s designers believe that this mining and refinement plant will bring billions of roubles to the regional budget through taxes, create new jobs and raise the investment potential of the region as a whole. However, almost half of the region’s residents are against the project, and fear the environmental impacts.
The project design proposes a full-cycle complex in Tomino, some 12km south of Chelyabinsk. This will make it the largest such factory in Russia today. As the Russian Copper Company (RMK) reports, there’s enough ore reserves at Tomino to last for roughly 50 years. On a yearly basis, that would translate to roughly 28m tonnes going through the complex. Indeed, RMK is currently preparing a site of more than 3,000 hectares for construction, with more than half a million dollars committed.
Currently, this site is occupied by a forest, which previously enjoyed the status of a protected territory, and offered some protection to one of Russia’s most polluted cities. However, in 2013, the regional government removed this protected status, without much in the way of public discussion or the necessary decisions in the regional bureaucracy.
