YAKUTSK, May 22. /TASS/. Necessary paperwork to remove the tailings dump at the Deputatsky Mining and Processing Plant in Yakutia's Ust-Yansky District will be prepared in 2023, the region's Acting Minister of Ecology, Nature Management and Forestry Yevgeny Perfiliev told TASS.

The tailings dump stopped working in 1997. In 2020, the region organized public hearings to discuss how to handle the tailings dump, but the project's paperwork failed to receive an approval at the federal level.

"This year we plan to work on the paperwork to remove the Deputatsky Mining and Processing Plant," the official said. "Funds for these purposes - 58 million rubles ($727,000) - have been planned as "colored" environmental expenses."

Yakutia's current works on environmental and industrial safety of hydraulic structures, tailings dumps are financed under federal and state programs, he added.

"The issues of addressing the accumulated environmental damage and revegetation of disturbed lands in the region's Arctic territory are among top priorities," he continued. "Those are the Deputatsky tailings dump, the Batagai processing plant, abandoned settlements, accumulated scrap metals, and sunken ships."

"Our inventory includes 175 locations of accumulated scrap metal at a total area of 99 hectares," he said. "In riverbeds there are 238 wrecks, and 18 wrecks in the Tiksi seaport waters, where 154 do not have legal owners."

"Most unattended vessels were sunk in the 1970s - 1990s," the acting deputy minister said. "Besides, there are 28 abandoned settlements in the region's Arctic zone."

Transportation of scrap metal from Yakutia's Arctic districts is problematic, since the region does not have year-round transport links between settlements, and due to high costs.

Tailings dump at Kular gold recovery plant

The Clean Country regional project under the Ecology national project in the current year finalizes works to remove the tailings dump at the Kular gold recovery plant, he continued. "As of today, the project has been completed by about 96%, its cost is 942 million rubles ($11.8 million)," he said.

The tailings dump is located in the Ust-Yansky District. The facility was commissioned in 1965 and continued working to 1990. Works to remove the dump began in 2021.