Surprising permit In mid-August, however, the Minister for...

Surprising permit

In mid-August, however, the Minister for Business and Mineral Resources announced that Tanbreez has been granted permission to extract minerals at Killavaat Alannguat.

The news caused a stir, not least when it emerged that the schedule for the project had been agreed upon during an investor conference in Toronto, Canada, at the beginning of March.

Present here were representatives of Tanbreez, an American investor, the Department of Mineral Resources, the Minister of Mineral Resources himself and the Municipality of Kujalleq, which is home to the mining project.

From the department head's notes, which we have been given access to, it appears that the representatives of Tanbreez indicated that for financial reasons they needed an exploitation permit to proceed with the project.

Subsequently, critical questions were asked in the Greenlandic Landsting, Inatsisartut, and the fishermen in the area protested.

By this time, Tanbreez had had at least one rejection of its mining application. That is why it is all the more surprising that the exploitation permit is based on seven-year-old consultation material, which is described as severely flawed in almost all of the consultation responses.

The point of view is shared, for example, by Kanukoka - the National Association of Greenland Municipalities, Kommuneqarfik Sermersooq - the neighboring municipality of Kujalleq Municipality - and DTU Wind EnGuidelines were disregarded

Since Killavaat Alannguat is the first large mining project in Greenland that has been approved by the authorities, it may be relevant to look at how the approval procedure was carried out and what the consequences will be for the management practices that will apply to the long series raw material applications, which, one must expect, are on their way.

Without going into too much detail, it seems obvious that the Norwegian Minerals Authority's guidelines for preparing EIA reports have not been followed.

Not least, it is striking that, after the consultation process had been completed, an updated EIA report was drawn up, which has not been published.

According to the consultation responses, there is also uncertainty about the size of the annual mineral production and the real life of the mine.

The EIA report from 2013 describes an operating period of only ten years - five years for each of the two open mines - whereas the exploitation permit runs for 30 years.ergy.

Permission granted without a plan

The description of the mineral deposits is also not comprehensive. For example, there is uranium in the license area, but this is not mentioned in the consultation material.

In addition, the exploitation permit has been granted without an approved exploitation and decommissioning plan, which is otherwise required in the Minerals Act. Tanbreez has been given a deadline of the end of 2022 to get the plans approved.

In all likelihood, the reason is that the authorities want to pressure the mining company to build a chemical separation plant in order to increase tax revenues from the project, regardless of the cost to the environment.

If applicable, the separation plant will have a consumption of up to 2000 tonnes of sulfuric acid per day.

Massive pollution in sight

Even without a chemical plant, however, the environmental consequences of the mining project will be serious: According to almost all the consultation responses, water contaminated by lead and other heavy metals will spread to rivers and fjords from the planned storage pot for tailings and waste rock.

The dust and particle dispersion from the mining activities is greatly underestimated in the consultation material, and the nearby towns of Narsaq and Qaqortoq will be contaminated with dust that, in addition to lead, contains uranium, thorium, zinc, arsenic and other toxic substances.

According to Kommuneqarfik Sermersooq, mining will also damage agriculture in the area. This last one is of particular importance because Killavaat Alannguat is close to Kujataa, the Unesco World Heritage Site, which is a historical agricultural landscape.

However, no impact assessment of the mining project's impact on the World Heritage site has been carried out, nor has it been submitted to Unesco for assessment in accordance with the guidelines for the implementation of the World Heritage Convention.