The copper mining town of Karabash faces a dilemma. The plant at its centre is poisoning the environment and damaging residents’ health yet closing it would deprive the community of its primary employer. The land around the copper plant “looks like a post-apocalyptic landscape.”^[1] Industrial waste—cinder banks, slime and tailings storage facilities, pyrite tailings, and sedimentation ponds—continually mount up. Harmful metals contaminate the area in quantities that outstrip safe levels more than tenfold, while chemical effluents stain the town’s lake and nearby Sak-Elga river orange. Yet, the plant’s existence divides the town’s inhabitants. At a rally in 2015, when angry residents called for it to close, the employees shot back, “Who’s going to feed you then?”^[2]

[1] Russia Plus (2019). ‘The most polluted city in Russia – Karabash,’ 13 June.
Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-I8ndk9W6s&ab_channel=RussianPlus
Accessed: 22 April 2021.

[2] Chesnokov.