This year’s rainy summer is yet another reminder of the fact that it is necessary to do some reclamation work at the old solid consumption waste landfill in Karabash, Sverdlovsk Region, Russian Copper Company says. The landfill was sealed in 2010.

The first section of the new solid consumption waste landfill was opened in Karabash last year in order to help solve the town’s numerous environmental problems.

The new landfill facility meets all the modern environmental standards and is fitted with the necessary machinery. Even the first section of this ‘green construction’ should be enough to meet the town’s needs within the next decade. Meanwhile, we are already considering putting up an extension to the facility, so the waste problem will soon no longer be an issue for Karabash – and this will remain the case for several upcoming decades, at least,’ the company says.

However, a series of heavy rains flooded the old landfill, which is why the experts from Rostechnadzor (the state industrial safety watchdog) and from the Ministry for Radiation & Environmental Safety had to inspect the site.

The expert committee reports the old landfill in Karabash is not hazardous.

The level of the River Sak-Elga rose considerably due to rains, and some areas of the landfill were flooded; however, the protective dam did not allow for the contamination of the river with pollutants. The condition of the sealed landfill is daily checked upon by the communal housing services department and by the town council’s environmental protection department. We are also working hard on the final solution to disposing of ‘the past’, that is, on the full reclamation of the old landfill near the River Sak-Elga, which is a tributary of the Miass. Only then will we be able to say the problem has really been solved,’ says Mayor of Karabash Vyacheslav Yagodin.