The GOK Ozerny turned the road in the Eravninsky district of Buryatia into a chaotic situation with a large number of heavy trucks. However, the local authorities had to fix the road, not a large mining company.
By June 2022, the Ulan-Ude-Sosnovo-Ozerskoye highway was in a very bad condition, but neither the ones responsible for the damaged road nor the authorities were in a hurry to fix it. As a result, residents of the Yeravninsky district had to create a petition to bring attention to the problem. The petition had the following message:
“We, residents and guests of the Yeravninsky district, request that you promptly repair the Ulan-Ude-Sosnovo-Ozerskoye highway! This year it has become impassable: heavy trucks traveling to the Ozerny and Egitinsky mining and processing enterprises have destroyed all the roads – now they are unable to pass through. With the arrival of summer, the situation will worsen due to rain. The head of the district and the leaders of the GOK, take action!
In response to the appeal, the head of Buryatia, Alexei Tsydenov, pledged to allocate funds for restoration work as quickly as possible. The amount of these funds will exceed seven million rubles, and they will come from the republic's reserve fund. However, the upcoming repairs will not solve the issue of damaged roads in the area.
The republican Ministry of Transport stated that the cause of the collapsed section of the route was the heavy trucks exceeding the permitted weight limit during the seasonal soil thaw. As mentioned in the message from local residents, these specialized vehicles belong to the Russian company Ozernoye LLC, which is involved in the extraction of polymetallic ore deposits and the production of zinc and lead-silver concentrates. It's worth noting that this company is the largest taxpayer in the republic.
GOK Ozerny causes a lot of inconvenience to residents of the Yeravninsky district.
Earlier, Babr already reported that the Ozerny GOK did not prepare the infrastructure for the development of the deposit at all: no roads for heavy trucks, no power lines, no railway line. Meanwhile, Ozernoye is located far from major administrative centers, and the construction of a railway line would greatly simplify the transportation of minerals.
To understand the impact of the mining and processing plant on the condition of roads without a proper transportation system, one only needs to perform simple mathematical calculations. According to official data, the average annual production of the company in the future will be around eight million tons, which is approximately 600,000 tons per month. The carrying capacity of one heavy truck is only 25 tons. This means that hundreds of trucks will need to travel along the highway from the site every day. It's not surprising that with such a heavy load, the highway will constantly require repairs.
Regarding the repair, while the Ozerny GOK is directly linked to the damaged highway, for some reason the authorities had to address the issue. At the same time, significant funds are being withdrawn from the reserve fund of Buryatia, which is made up of the taxes paid by local residents. Therefore, a very unfavorable situation arises: the company brings the roads to a state of disrepair, and the population is forced to bear the cost.
It is highly likely that such a strategy will continue until the local authorities stop covering the jambs of large taxpayers and benefit from such partnerships: the development of the republic and the improvement of the living standards of the local population.
Despite the fact that the company’s field has not even started working at full capacity yet, it already causes a lot of inconvenience to the residents of the Yeravninsky district. So, in February 2021, in the GOK area, imploding workswhich frightened the inhabitants of several villages. According to the villagers, because of the explosions, the houses were shaking, and the walls were cracking, which made it even scary to conduct classes in schools. Then the company had to reduce the blast wave and move work to another time: not during school hours.
