Local residents say 'hungry' abyss in the ground is swallowing houses
NOVOYAVORIVSK – The first mistake was building an open-pit sulfur mine on land that was riddled with sinkholes. The second mistake was closing it.
The Sirka sulfur mine at Novoyavorivsk near the Lviv oblast town of Yavoriv is dying. Last year it posted a net loss of Hr 20 million.
But before Sirka can be left to rest in peace, it is necessary to clean up the damage done by 35 years of mining, while continuing to pump ground water from the open pit. If the mine stops pumping water, buildings will be buried, neighboring villages flooded and contaminated water from the mine will cause pollution as far away as Poland and Romania.
But Sirka has nowhere near the Hr 70 million it needs to keep the floods at bay.
The enterprise, which was established in 1964, was never profitable, Kazimir Preslitsky, Sirka’s technical director, explains. It didn’t have to be. It was a state enterprise established to mine sulfur, one of the main ingredients in chemical fertilizers, and all losses were covered by the government.
In the mid-1980s the enterprise was producing up to 1.5 million tons of sulfur a year using the so-called Frasch method and open-pit mining. The Frasch method involves boring holes into the ground and melting the sulfur to the surface with steam.
Open-pit mining is just that – digging for sulfur in a large open pit.
Today Sirka produces just 100,000 tons of sulfur per year, none of which comes from the 3-kilometer by 4-kilometer open pit.
Once the site of a small village, the open-pit mine is now a 90-meter deep hole the enterprise’s assets are sinking into.
No longer able to afford to operate the pit, Sirka finds itself in the uncomfortable situation of having to pay for the useless land while pumping water from its depths. Sirka would like to give the land back to local residents, but first it must make it safe.
One of the things that makes the task so difficult is that the land Sirka occupies was never suitable for mining in the first place.
The limestone landscape contains numerous sinkholes – natural cavities that are usually filled with sand or water – and several rivers flow through the area. Mother Nature had to be drastically altered for Sirka to exist.
A complex of reservoirs and pumps was built to keep the rivers from flooding the open pit. Maintaining the complex water redirection system costs close to Hr 62,000 a day.
Meanwhile, draining the surrounding area of ground water has caused many of the area’s numerous sinkholes to collapse. Now Sirka engineers must travel around the region filling these holes in.
The sinkholes have always been there, but before the mine was built they seldom collapsed. Now they are collapsing on a daily basis.
Last year 82-year-old Roman Lahan had a potato and beet patch. This year he has a pond. What was once a river that passed close to his land is now a lake.
On April 2 a 200-meter deep hole appeared on his neighbor Yevhen Bondaruk’s land.
But that is nothing compared to the “abyss” that has swallowed half a dozen fields and houses in the two centuries since it first collapsed in 1798.
“It is living and hungry,” says Preslitsky.
One of the most recent victims of the abyss is an uninhabited house that is being held up by metal rods. The house is only 10-years old, but it already sags in the middle. Next-door neighbor Paraska Tsykalyshyn recalls the construction of the house.
After construction was finished, the new owners had a party. During the festivities people started to shout and scream. When Tsykalyshen went next door to see what was going on, she realized the house was sinking. Her new neighbors fled and never returned.
To reverse the process, Sirka must empty the mine, line the bottom with concrete and fill it with water to make a lake.
The company must also fill in 4,000 holes left from pumping sulfur and replace the territory’s contaminated top soil with fresh soil.
But Sirka has nowhere near the Hr 70 million the project would cost. It doesn’t even have money to pay its electricity bill.
When he arrived at work on May 15, Preslitsky found a note from the electric company saying Sirka’s electricity would be turned off the next day.
After the electricity goes off, Preslitsky would have 16 hours to come up with Hr 3 million before the mine would be flooded beyond repair, local drinking-water sources endangered and villages under water.
Sirka didn’t have the money, but the local authorities helped the company out by paying part of the bill to the electric company.
Debt and destitution were not in the company’s original game plan.
“During Soviet times no one ever thought this place would close,” explains Preslitsky. “It was supposed to last for 100 years.”
It has been 35.
With independence in 1991, funding for the state enterprise ran dry. In 1993 Sirka was no longer able to afford the cost of mining the open pit. Its workforce of 10,000 slowly dwindled to 2,000, and it used only the Frasch method.
When open-pit mining stopped, the pit was declared an ecological zone, which means the government is supposed to finance closure and cleanup.
But in the end, responsibility lies with the company.
“The situation with the sinkholes would be much better if it wasn’t for the open-pit mine here,” says Anatoly Haydin, a staff member at the Institute of the Chemical Mining Industry.
Preslitsky does not deny this, but insists he doesn’t have the money to do anything. This year he asked the government for Hr 24 million. He got Hr 6 million.
The company’s Hr 27 million electricity debts were forgiven last year, but since then their debt has crept back up to Hr 3 million. Preslitsky and local scientists and politicians have banded together to convince the government of the urgency of the situation.
Preslitsky isn’t overly optimistic, especially given the unstable political situation.
“The thing is, every time we prepare our documents and the government okays them, the government changes,” says Preslitsky.
And if the mine does not receive government support soon, then one day when Preslitsky is unable to appease the electric company, the abyss may swallow Sirka and its neighboring villages whole.
