A man fishing in Helsinki in April 2021. A social movement has sprouted against a proposed battery material plant in Hamina, Southern Finland, over concerns about the plant’s impact on the state of the Baltic Sea. (Vesa Moilanen – Lehtikuva)
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THE GRANTING of an environmental permit has spawned a social movement against a battery material plant in Hamina, Southern Finland.
The Regional Administrative Agency (AVI) for Southern Finland on 12 February granted the plant an environmental permit for producing around 60,000 tonnes of chemicals a year. While the permit imposes limits on the amount of metals, nitrogen and particles that can be released into air and water, it allows the plant to discharge effectively untreated wastewater into the Baltic Sea.
AVI for Southern Finland ruled that the sulphate contained in the wastewater will cause neither significant detriment to the environment nor risk of such detriment if the plant is operated in accordance with the permit.
Non-governmental organisations have launched a petition that demands that the environmental permit be partly rescinded and the plant be obligated to treat all its wastewater. The petition received over 40,000 signatures in one week following its launch.
“An incomprehensible decision. This is from a different era,” Raija Seppälä, a deputy chairperson for the Finnish Association for Nature Conservation (SLL) in Southeast Finland, told Helsingin Sanomat on Saturday.
The sponsors of the petition are especially concerned about sodium sulphate, which can trigger the release of phosphorus from recesses on the seabed and contribute to eutrophication.
They also pointed to the environmental harm caused by sulphate emissions from the nickel mine of Talvivaara in Sotkamo, Kainuu. “At the time, the emissions were at most one-tenth of the amount that’ll be released in the direction of Hamina bay,” highlighted Seppälä.
Jouni Lehtoranta, a senior researcher at the Finnish Environment Institute (Syke), reminded that the sulphate emissions should be examined relative to the size of the body water. While the battery material plant would be the largest
Source: www.helsinkitimes.fi
