Environment Energy Mining Watch SEE|News|For the Serbian Prime Minister, the opening of the lithium mine is unquestionable

For the Serbian Prime Minister, the opening of the lithium mine is unquestionable

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Miroslav Mijatović from the Podrinje anti-corruption team, who attended the meeting with the Prime Minister, reports for Nova.rs that the Prime Minister, when they submitted the petition to her, said that the Rio Tinto project was “unquestionable” for her.

Activists of several associations of citizens and environmental groups submitted a petition to the Prime Minister Ana Brnabić with more than 32,000 signatures against the project of the company Rio Tinto to open a lithium mine in the valley of the river Jadar.

“At our insistence that the project be stopped because there are explicit arguments against the mine and that the state must protect the public interest, we were told that they could not withdraw the project and that it was unquestionable for them. At my insistence that the law does not allow mining for companies that have not fulfilled their obligations towards environmental protection, the Prime Minister only said: “We are not the United Nations,” recounts Mijatović’s conversation with the Prime Minister.

A group of activist organizations is asking for a ban on opening this mine due to its harmfulness to the environment, as well as numerous non-transparency in the realization of that project.

“We are convinced that, neither through a feasibility study nor through an environmental impact assessment, the company and our institutions can prove that this project is feasible,” Mijatovic told Nova.rs

“If we have information that the life of the mine will be at least 60 years, we come to the figure of 90 million tons of tailings that will be literally next to the river and threaten the whole of western Serbia if there is a flood,” Mijatovic points out.

He warns that the spatial plan for special purposes, which was adopted by the Government with a decree in March 2020, is not harmonized with the spatial plan of Serbia and the City of Loznica, which is a legal obligation.

Professor Dragana Djordjevic warns that this is a dangerous technology for the living world in the fertile part of Serbia, and that the rivers that flow into the Drina will be endangered.

The representative of the organization Ne damo Jadar and a resident of the area where the mine is planned, Zlatko Kokanovic, said that the citizens of that area in the vicinity of Loznica are worried and scared, that the company Rio Tinto, which plans to open the mine, is pressuring them to give the land. they are most afraid because there are two flooded rivers in that area.

Environmentalists have repeatedly warned that Rio Tinto’s “Jadar” project will cover over 2,000 hectares of land and that seven to eight million euros a year, as much as the state would collect from lithium exploitation, is a “poor sum” for losing so much land.

“This country is an exceptional natural resource. A tailings dump 40 meters high, several hundred meters long and a few hundred meters wide will be formed there. In addition, Loznica is a city that has one environmental bomb, the remains of the former giant “Viscose”. Hundreds of cubic meters of hydrochloric and sulfuric acid have been stored there, and no one has yet started eliminating that extremely dangerous waste, “warned the dean of the Faculty of Forestry, Prof. Ratko Ristic.

Source: nova.rs

 

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