[Translation prepared by Business & Human Rights Resource Centre]

Kazzinc LLP was fined 800 thousand tenge for violations of wastewater discharge, 26 May 2021

...At the beginning of May, news spread across social media about a suspicious river in the Altai region, which suddenly turned bright green... Then the authors of the videos suggested that the cause of the greening was the consequences of the activities of the local industrial division of Kazzinc LLP. However, the company refuted people's opinions...

Nevertheless, specialists from the East Kazakhstan Department of Ecology went to the river to understand the situation. The department later reported the reason for the change in water color.

“Water flows out of the enterprise’s tailings pond and ends up in a special pond located nearby,” explained the regional Department of Ecology. - The water is slightly acidic and needs to be settled. In stagnant water, the process of photosynthesis takes place, plants begin to grow there, which give this green color... But in the last two years, a glitch was discovered in the technological scheme of discharge and drainage... and now green waters flow to Bukhtarma along this river.

...As the Department explained, experts decided to find out the level of chemical substances in it and its possible negative impact on Berezovka. Some of the samples were transferred to the RSE "Kazhydromet" for biotesting for toxicity and analysis of the amount of phytoplankton...

“Experts have established that the wastewater has a greenish color due to its oversaturation with the biomass of aquatic plants or their residues,” explained the Department...

For this offense, Kazzinc LLP was imposed an administrative fine of 291,700 tenge...

In wastewater, experts revealed that standards for manganese emissions were exceeded by 140 times, zinc emissions by almost 45 times, ammonium salts by almost two and a half times, nitrite ions by more than five times, sulfates by almost six times and copper exactly five times. The amount of environmental damage caused, according to environmentalists, during the period under review exceeded eight million tenge...