Akzo’s partner must immediately do away with salt tips

17/04/16

by Lex Rietman

(published in Het Financieele Dagblad on Wednesday February 24th, 2016

)The Spanish mining company Iberpotash, with whom AkzoNobel signed a cooperation agreement for thirty years, must clean up two gigantic heaps of salt waste in Central Catalonia, and repair damage to the environment.

This is what the Provincial Court of Barcelona decided on appeal. At the same time, the Court sentenced three former Iberpotash board members managers to one and a half year in jail. This judgement reduces the jail term decided in first instance by half a year due to the many years (11) that the procedure was pending after the complaint for serious water pollution was lodged.

Potash mining

The judgment, which cannot be appealed, imposes an obligation to repair the environmental damage caused by Iberpotash’s potash mining operation.

This has far-reaching consequences. Mining potash, a substance used for fertilizers, generates large quantities of salt waste. As a consequence, two gigantic salt mountains have risen some 250 metres high next to Iberpotash’s two potash mines, 60 kilometres from Barcelona. Close to Sallent lie an estimated 50 million tons salt waste, and not far from Súria lie some 30 million tons. The environmental department of the Prosecutor’s office requests that Iberpotash start immediately to do away with the waste tips. Moreover, the company must clean up the badly polluted ground water in four municipalities around the mines.

Renamed

Iberpotash states that a clean-up is so expensive that it will cost jobs.

According to Iberpotash — the company was meanwhile renamed ICL Iberia and since 1998 is an affiliate of the Israeli multinational ICL — it is impossible to clean the polluted areas. The cost would be so high that jobs would be jeopardised. Iberpotash employs 1,200 people.

But the Barcelona court dismissed these arguments. An obligation to repair the damaged caused is, according to the tribunal, the most logical way to express liability. The judgement reads that ‘it is not for this court to take into account the possible cost of the clean-up.’

An old problem

Iberpotash says that this is an old problem. The company told news agency ACN that it complies with all environmental rules and regulations. ‘We should not confuse today’s management of the company with events from the past’ said a spokesperson.

According to environmentalists, Iberpotash is in fact just continuing to dump waste salt from the mines. They say that 5,000 tons a day are being dumped. The cost of removing the waste salt tips at Sallent and Súria alone is estimated at over €150 million.