Gross environmental damage is being investigated in the Orivesi gold mine. The emptying of the mine shaft full of waste has now begun five years after the illegal dump came to light.
Orivesi the illegal dump located in the gold mine has started to be emptied and cleaned. The Internal Finland Police estimates that the emptying and cleaning will take three weeks.
The crime commissioner in charge of the criminal investigation Joni Länsipuron all waste lifted from the mine shaft used as a dump is documented.
Documentation is important for assigning responsibility. The waste loads were investigated by several police officers.
The Orivesi gold mine is owned by the Australian mining company Dragon Mining.
Read more: The emptying of the Orivesi mine will start next week – The police suspect gross damage to the environment
Mine shaft the emptying is handled by an external contractor who has not previously worked at the Orivesi mine.
“At the moment, the material coming out of the shaft is mainly rock, which is logical when you’re in a mine,” says Länsipuro.
“On all other waste, the police make observations, which are recorded. Each pile of waste is numbered, and after a visual assessment, the waste may be sampled.”
Länsipuro says that the police are particularly interested in date information found among packaging waste.
“With the help of the dates, we are able to bracket when the waste has gone into the ditch.”
The goal is to allocate responsibility to the right party, as the mine has had several owners and thus several responsible persons.
“We also don’t want to assign responsibility to entities that don’t belong,” says Länsipuro.
Critical waste also includes explosives, especially unexploded ones.
“It is important to screen them out and make them harmless.”
Länsipuron according to, emptying the waste pit is an exceptional operation.
“The waste is stuck in the ditch, and therefore it is not easy to get it up. Ways and tools that are significantly more robust than usual are needed.”
Länsipuro says that the emptying has been prepared in good cooperation with the police, the Pirkanmaa ely center and the mining company Dragon Mining.
“After emptying, the biggest work begins. First, the material is screened and delivered to a waste treatment facility. After that, we can figure out how to allocate the responsibilities.”
Länsipuro estimates that the preliminary investigation of the case will be completed by the end of the year.
In the beginning of 2019, the Orivesi mine was undergoing a controlled shutdown. The ore was loaded onto the platform of the truck with a wheel loader and transported to the surface of the earth to await further transport.
In the mining area waste has been placed in the mine shaft in violation of environmental permits almost since the beginning of mining operations.
Mining operations in the area were started by Outokumpu in 1994, and operations continued continuously until 2003.
When Outokumpu gave up its mining operations, the operations of the Orivesi mine were transferred to Polar Mining, which reopened the mine in 2007. Polar Mining’s parent company is the Australian Dragon Mining.
The unauthorized placement of waste in the mine shaft only ended in 2016, when the then management of the Orivesi mine found out about it. At that time, workers were forbidden to continue placing waste in the shaft.
The management of the mining company did not inform the authorities about the matter. The topic made the news in 2018, when Suomen Kuvalehti told about the waste stored in the mine shaft.
After the matter became public, the police of Inner Finland started a preliminary investigation into possible environmental crimes. It was decided to stop the operation of the mine in June 2019, when the mine was denied an environmental permit by decision of the Supreme Administrative Court.
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“Even a problematic well can only be stopped at the wall.”
Waste therefore, the cleaning will only start now, five years after the issue came to light.
Chief inspector familiar with the case of the Orivesi gold mine Vesa Hyvärinen Pirkanmaa’s ely center says that it took a long time to get started, mainly due to bureaucratic reasons.
“Even a problematic well can only be stopped at the wall. There are certain processes that need to go through before the waste loaders can be brought to the site.”
Hyvärinen says that the ely center has tried from the beginning to ensure that illegally placed waste is removed from the mine.
“The quality of the waste has also had to be examined, because there has been a disagreement between ely and Dragon Mining.”
Waste the investment site must meet the requirements set for an underground investment site. The waste itself must also be suitable for placing underground.
These criteria are defined in regulations. The State Council regulation on landfills determine the quality of waste suitable for investment. The decision of the Council of Europe, on the other hand, has determined the requirements set for the underground waste disposal site.
“As a result of the results of the investigations, the Regional Administrative Agency of Western and Central Finland made a decision that the criteria are not met,” says Hyvärinen.
After the Supreme Administrative Court’s decision, Dragon Mining still applied to the regional administration office for a permit to store waste in the mine. It was denied in April 2022.
Mine manager Petteri Tanner in the already abandoned mine corridor in 2019.
of Dragon Mining an Australian CEO Brett Smith speculated in an HS article in January 2019 that the unauthorized dumping of waste continued for a long time “probably because there were several people working at the mine who had been there since the days of Outokumpu and had started the practice”.
In the same context, Smith believed that the underground waste buried in the mine caused at most minor environmental harm.
Read more: Welcome to the dragon’s lair
Hyvärinen of the Pirkanmaa Ely Center says that for now it is impossible to precisely break down the environmental harm caused by the landfill itself in relation to other, generally known harms of mining.
“Of course, the reason why the mining company was not granted permission to leave waste in the mine shaft is precisely because it is considered possible that the landfill, if left in place, could cause harm.”
Orivesi the environmental harm caused by the gold mine was widely reported for the first time already in 2012, six years before the illegal dump was revealed.
Among other things, HS wrote at the time that the aluminum, nitrogen and sulfate concentrations of the mine’s drainage water were considerable and were visible as increased amounts of harmful substances in both Orivede’s Ala-Jalkajärvi and Peräjärvi.
The emissions had affected the fish in these lakes and hindered, among other things, the reproduction of fish.
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