The Elanskoye field, located in the Voronezh region, has recently been heard by many people. Something strange is happening there - local residents are organizing meetings of many thousands and in a harsh manner demand to stop the development of the field. What is the reason for such an aggressive position and what are people trying to fight against?
Cause of war
A conflict over the Elanskoye field arose between investors and local residents. Investors are planning to develop nickel deposits, which will soon be highly quoted on world markets. Residents, in turn, are protesting against the development, as they will turn the flourishing land into an industrial zone. At the same time, residents are not expected to receive special compensation from the Ural Mining and Metallurgical Company. To date, exploration work has been suspended due to the lack of documents that were required to be presented by representatives of the Cossacks.
At the time of the termination of geological exploration at the Elanskoye field, detachments of police officers are working, protecting the disputed territory from both sides.
The war between environmental activists and the Ural Mining and Metallurgical Company has been going on for over a year. The conflict erupted after the Mednogorsk Copper and Sulfur Combine (UMMC) won the tender for a tender for additional exploration and development of the deposit. Immediately after that, residents of Voronezh and other neighboring regions began to gather huge rallies, protesting against the development of deposits of nickel, copper, gold, silver, platinum and cobalt. Some even went on a hunger strike, wrote to Putin and demanded a referendum.
Nickel and ecology
Environmentalists argue that there is no project for the development of the Elanskoye field available to the general public. The population was only informed that ore mines and an enrichment plant would be built on their land, which could have an extremely negative impact on the environment. Nickel itself is a heavy toxic metal, therefore, the activities of enterprises for its extraction and enrichment will lead to a large volume of harmful emissions into water and the atmosphere.
Thus, enterprises operating in the Murmansk and Norilsk regions are already significantly polluting the atmosphere with sulfur compounds.
If a large amount of nickel is brought to the surface of the earth and accumulated in the dumps, particles of metal salts can be carried by airborne droplets. To avoid the destruction of the local ecology, residents are constantly monitoring the Elanskoye deposit and are not going to retreat in the face of a local environmental catastrophe that may occur as a result of the development of the nickel site.
