[Ferro-Alloys.com]No sooner had chimneys pumping sulfur dioxide into Northwest Russian and Scandinavia been stifled last month than they were given permission Tuesday to carry on business as usual by Russia’s federal environmental oversight agency, Rosprirodnadzor.

 

Pollution bellowing from the KMMC’s facilities has long been a point of fierce debate among Russia, Finland and Norway, the later of which gets polluted to the tune of some 100,000 tons of the heavy metal sulfur dioxide annually. Russia has often counterattacked by saying its Northwest is getting gassed by Norwegian emissions. Norway maintains such accusations are based on distorted data – most of it furnished by Rosprirodnadzor itself.

 

On Tuesday, officials from the agency told Bellona it had reviewed its decision to deny the Kola Mining and Metallurgy Combine’s emissions license for its facility in the industrial town of Nikel, near Murmansk.

 

The KMMC occupies three towns on the Kola Peninsula: Zapolyarny, where the KMMC mines its nickel ore, Nikel where it is smelted, and Monchegorsk, where the nickel is refined.

 

Facilities in Nikel saw their license restored, and the nickel smelting plant run by the KMMC – a daughter company of the sprawling Norilsk Nickel – can again release sulfur dioxide and other polluting emissions into the environment.

 

Russia’s Ministry of National Resources even threw in a little award for Norilsk Nickel – which produces 40 percent of the world’s nickel – for its environmental conscience. The all but bogus Evolution Award, established in 2013, was shared among the nickel giant and five other multi-billion dollar Russian companies with dubious, even discredited, environmental credentials.

 

The Kola Peninsula’s nickel smelting facility was last month denied its emissions license on the basis of what Rosprirodnadzor auditors said were inaccurate, contradictory and even concocted figures in its routinely submitted emissions reports. Pollution permits had earlier been issued to the KMMC’s factory in Zapolyarny.

 

Bellona reviewed a letter – shared by the Independent Barents Observer news portal – sent from Rosprirodnadzor to KMMC management, which revealed that company’s reports lacked information about achieving zero emissions status and closing several of its emitting sources.

 

Article from Internet for Reference