The mining company Zijin submitted a request for deciding on the need to make an environmental impact assessment of the project which plans to increase the capacity for flotation processing of ore from the surface mine Veliki Krivelj near Bor, the Ministry of Environmental Protection announced.
As previously announced, about 30% of the works on the construction of the new flotation of the Veliki Krivelj mine have been performed by April, and the value of this investment is 49.7 million euros.
As stated in the project, the new flotation of the Veliki Krivelj mine will operate with a capacity of 13.2 Mt (megatons), at the same time and independently of the existing one with a capacity of 9.9 Mt of dry ore.
The new flotation will be built near the existing one, east of the flotation, below the place where the copper filtration is performed. The total area of the industrial zone will be over two thousand square meters.
The main facilities of the new flotation in this project will be a flat ore bunker, a primary crushing plant, a primary crushed ore warehouse, a conveyor belt for conveyor belts, a grinding and flotation plant, a thickener and a filtration plant, as well as ancillary facilities such as reagent storage, reagent preparation room and blower compartment.
The company Zijin is connected with air pollution in Bor, as well as with the frequent pollution of the river Timok, into which it discharges wastewater. At the end of last month, the company opened a gold and copper mine in Cukaru Peki in Bor.
Early last year, the Center for Investigative Reporting (CINS) wrote that Zijin was in court for air pollution in Bor. The Mining and Smelting Basin (RTB) Bor has been majority owned by Zijin since 2018.
Residents of the village of Krivelj expect to be completely relocated due to the expansion of the mine. The relocation was also considered in the spatial plan from 1977.
The residents of Veliki Krivelj sent a request to the relevant ministry that this relocation be in accordance with the mine maps of certified reserves, so that they would not move again in half a century, Nova Ekonomija reports.
