The planned battery material factory in Hamina could reset its eutrophication emissions to the Baltic Sea by financing the plastering of the fields, says Seppo Knuuttila, chairman of the Baltic Sea Panel.
Hamina the planned battery material factory has created a popular movement on behalf of the Gulf of Finland.
At the civic address, tens of thousands of people demand the partial cancellation of the factory's environmental permit. Citizens are worried about wastewater discharges, which are feared to weaken the condition of the Gulf of Finland and intensify the eutrophication of the sensitive sea area even more.
Ammonium nitrogen, which is usable directly for algae, ends up in Hamina's inner archipelago with wastewater.
When the load increases by 20 tons of ammonium nitrogen, it means about 3 million kilograms of algae in the sea, calculated as wet weight. The load can be assumed to end up entirely in algae growth, because nitrogen is the so-called minimum nutrient in the Gulf of Finland in summer.
“This is clearly a euphoric emission,” says the chairman of the Baltic Sea Panel, specialist researcher Seppo Knuuttila from the Finnish Environmental Center (Syke).
However, according to Knuuttila, the factory could compensate for its nitrogen emissions by reducing phosphorus emissions from nearby fields.
“The company could zero out its eutrophication emissions by paying, for example, for the gypsum treatment of fields in the nearby Summanjoki catchment area,” suggests Knuuttila.
The Water Act does not oblige to compensate for disadvantages in order to achieve the so-called total non-impairment. However, in Knuuttila's opinion, the company could take action voluntarily.
Of the fields plaster treatment has proven as an effective way to reduce phosphorus emissions from fields to the sea.
“If the factory considers that removing ammonium nitrogen is technically or financially difficult, it could compensate. Let's remove an amount of phosphorus proportional to the amount of nitrogen from eutrophicating the sea,” says Knuuttila.
to the Gulf of Finland the resulting nitrogen emission of 20 tons corresponds to the phosphorus emission of three tons.
According to Knuuttila, reducing it with the help of gypsum would require the treatment of about 15,000 arable hectares, considering that only about a third of the phosphorus reduction that can be achieved is immediately eutrophicable, such as ammonium nitrogen.
Gypsum processing costs 220 euros per hectare, so the cost for the factory would be 3.3 million euros. When the effect of plaster lasts for five years, the price per year would be 660,000 euros.
“It doesn't sound like a big amount when you're talking about a large factory investment,” says Knuuttila.
The State Council in the Finnish marine management plan program for the years 2022–2027, measures have been sought in every way to reduce the nutrient load in order to achieve a good state of coastal waters in the future.
“It is recorded in the factory's environmental permit that the project, if carried out in accordance with the permit regulations, will not adversely affect the achievement of the goals of the water and marine management plans. The statement is interesting. A good state is not achieved by increasing but by reducing emissions,” says Knuuttila.
The factory producing raw materials for electric car batteries will be implemented by the Finnish-Chinese CNGR Finland. It is owned by the Finnish state investment company Suomen Malmijalostus and a Chinese company, which has a 60 percent share.
The Regional Administrative Agency of Southern Finland granted the factory environmental permit, which concerns chemical production of 60,000 tons per year. The decision includes a permit for the wastewater discharge pipe.
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