GOK Ozerny turned the road in the Eravninsky district of Buryatia into a real mess with a large flow of heavy trucks. However, the republican authorities had to repair the route, and not a large mining company.
By June 2022, the Ulan-Ude-Sosnovo-Ozerskoye highway was in an extremely unusable condition, but neither the perpetrators of the broken road, nor the authorities were in a hurry to correct the situation. As a result, residents of the Yeravninsky district were forced to create a petition to draw attention to the problem. The message had the following content:
“We, residents and guests of the Yeravninsky district, ask you not to delay the repair of the Ulan-Ude-Sosnovo-Ozerskoye highway! This year it has become impossible to pass: heavy trucks that go to the Ozerny and Egitinsky mining and processing enterprises have smashed all the roads – now they themselves get up there. Now, with the onset of summer, it will rain, and it will be completely impossible to drive. The head of the district and the leaders of the GOK, take action!
In response to the appeal, the head of Buryatia, Alexei Tsydenov, promised to allocate funds for restoration work as soon as possible. The amount of these payments will be more than seven million rubles, and they will be allocated from the reserve fund of the republic. However, the upcoming repairs will not change the problem of broken roads in the area.
According to the republican Ministry of Transport, the reason for the collapsed section of the route was the excess of the permitted weight limit by heavy trucks during the seasonal soil soldering. And, as was mentioned in the message of local residents, special vehicles belong to Ozernoye LLC, a Russian company engaged in the development of polymetallic ore deposits and the production of zinc and lead-silver concentrates. By the way, the company is the largest taxpayer of the republic.
GOK Ozerny delivers a lot of inconvenience to residents of the Yeravninsky district.
Earlier, Babr already said 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 large administrative centers, and the construction of the same railway would greatly simplify the task of transporting minerals.
To imagine how much the mining and processing plant affects and will affect the condition of roads without an adequate transportation system, it is enough to make simple mathematical calculations. According to official data, the average annual production of the company in the future will vary within eight million tons, which is about 600,000 tons per month. The carrying capacity of one heavy truck is only 25 tons. That is, hundreds of trucks will have to be launched along the highway from the field every day. It is not surprising that with such a strong load, the highway will constantly require repairs.
By the way, about the repair. While the Ozerny GOK is directly related to the destroyed highway, for some reason the authorities had to solve the problem. At the same time, considerable funds are withdrawn from the reserve fund of Buryatia, which consists of the taxes of local residents. Thus, a completely unflattering picture is obtained: the company brings the roads to a dead state, and the population is forced to pay for it.
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.