The Ministry of Ecology has ordered ArcelorMittal Temirtau to plant 500 thousand trees in Temirtau

This was announced today during a briefing organized by the Ministry of Ecology, Geology and Natural Resources of the Republic of Kazakhstan. Chairman of the Environmental Regulation and Control Committee of the Ministry Zulfukhar Zholdasov informed about the recent emergency situation at ArcelorMittal Temirtau JSC.

So, according to the head of the Committee, on February 19 in one of the converter shops of the company there were failures in the work of the cleaning equipment. Because of this, within an hour, the entire volume of gas was released into the environment without cleaning. The Territorial Department of Ecology promptly opened an unscheduled check on this fact.

"Now our specialists are at the enterprise, an inspection is being carried out. Mainly, we will take measures on the following points – for late reporting, exceeding the standards, violation of the operation of treatment facilities, deviation from the examination, " the Chairman of the Committee said.

He also said that in connection with this incident, the head of the Ministry of Ecology Magzum Mirzagaliyev met with the Vice-President of the company "ArcelorMittal" Mr. Vijay Goyal. During the meeting, the Minister gave specific instructions on the greening of the enterprise's production. In particular, according to the new Environmental Code, to make the transition to the best available technologies, to introduce an automated system for monitoring emissions and to plant 500 thousand trees in Temirtau.

In addition, Zulfukhar Zholdasov informed that one of the systemic problems in the work of ArcelorMittal Temirtau is the outdated equipment of the CHPP.

"Temirtau is the city with the most polluted air. For 2 years, according to Kazhydromet, 67 cases of exceeding the level of pollution by more than 10 times were recorded. The main share of emissions is accounted for by ArcelorMittal Temirtau. During the inspections carried out at the enterprise, the excess of permissible dust standards was recorded by 125 times," the speaker said.

Zulfukar Zholdasov stressed that environmental activities of the company "work" only on paper.

"We have analyzed the effectiveness of the company's environmental measures. So, over the past 5 years, the company has spent 28 billion tenge on environmental protection measures, as a result, emissions were reduced by only 190 tons, which is 0.08% of the total emissions, " the head of the Committee added.